10th Birthday Par-tea & Tea Room Makeover

eteaket has just turned 10 so we’ve revamped our Tea Room and would like to invite you to our birthday par-tea.

We are 10!

It’s a little over 10 years since I opened the doors of the eteaket tea room on 16 December 2008. Boy, a lot has happened in 10 years. We’ve grown our wholesale tea business and now specialise in supercharging tea service in foodservice businesses; we’ve opened our Concept Store in central Edinburgh; grown our online ecommerce site where we spread the joy of tea all over the world; we’re exporting some tea overseas and, of course, have grown our team and our amazing tea tribe of fabulous tea lovers and had two children and two guinea pigs.

I got a little carried away a few months ago and wrote some words on the lessons I’ve learned over the past 10 years. You can read that here. It’s a little long, but I find writing is far cheaper than therapy.

In this message, I wanted to tell you all about our recent Tea Room makeover to celebrate eteaket’s 10th birthday and to invite you all to a tea cocktail par-tea.

Tea Room Makeover

I’ve been desperate to revamp the space for ages but I had to play the cat and mouse/ tenant and landlord game for most of last year. Talk to me about that in private because it wasn’t pretty. However we came out the other side stronger than ever (as with most challenges). I stupidly set a date of 14 January to shut for a few days to carry out the work. Then we were so manic over Christmas that no-one had any time to plan what we were actually going to do. It was only after Christmas that I got a breather and realised most places were closed till 7 January, giving us a week to sort out a whole refit.

Design inspo

Anyone that knows us though, will be aware that (taking inspo from the BrewDog guys) we like to work 70% faster than normal. It’s amazing to meet like-minded souls, which I thankfully did in the form of Renee Turner (Renee Turner Interiors). Another example of smashing networking, Renee came highly recommended through Niki Hutchinson’s Brilliant Business Builders Community and, of course, Kylie Reid’s awesome group Edinburgh Gossip Girls (EGG). I messaged Renee on 27 December (once I’d come out of my chocolate coma) and she jumped on our project, got inside my actual head and found things that would actually match and work in the space. I would just have painted everything turquoise (I have a track record…)

Before and After

There seems to be a 10 year challenge sweeping social media where everyone is posting pics from 10 years ago and the present. Perfect timing then for some before and after shots to celebrate.

I really hope you like our new look. We used some fair trade furniture from Myakka sourced from India (as a lot of our tea comes from India). Our modern brass lights from Pooky are reminiscent of colonial times mixed with some colourful jungle fabrics from Clarke and Clarke and of course our tea Chinese bird wallpaper (as a lot of our tea comes from China) from Graham & Brown.

“Thank Yous”

As with all events, there are a huge amount of thanks due… In no particular order I can’t thank Renee enough for her skills and tenacity and we simply couldn’t have done it without the immense effort from Kevin Doust and his team from Clandoust who did all the re-fit work including laying the floor. Kev and his son even ended up working all through the night one night to get the job done. I have no words! Then there’s Mira from Mira’s Alterations in Portobello for making all our cushions and Josh from Craig & Rose in Stockbridge for sorting us out in the paint department. I also cannot thank every single one of the eteaket team enough for all their amazing cleaning efforts and going the extra mile as usual!

A huge thanks is also due to the wonderful Zoe from Firefly in Edinburgh for making our jungle lampshade, to the guys at The Foam Centre in Edinburgh for helping us in the foam department, Mac Sharpe Upholstery in Tranent for redoing our couches and the guys at Black Box Edinburgh for doing our counter vinyl.

I found myself really enjoying the whole project once I had advice and guidance from Renee. It turned into a big lesson in trusting your own gut, having faith in your ideas and the joy of working with others. We couldn’t have achieved our new look without the amazing support of so many local and talented people. Please pop in soon and let us know what you think 🙂

Finally, I’d like to invite our fabulous supporters, customers, suppliers and interested parties to our 10th Birthday Par-tea on Thursday 21 Feb 6.30-8.30pm in our revamped Tea Room, 41 Frederick St Edinburgh. Please rsvp to me hello@eteaket.co.uk with subject Party Accept. There will be tea cocktails and nibbles so we look forward to seeing you then if not before.

THANK YOU, Erica