Brewing up new business: These JoCo shops offer customers an alternative to coffee

Although it’s a coffee-drinker’s world in Johnson County, two independently owned tea shops may help change some taste preferences when it comes to hot brews. Socially Tea KC in Olathe and Savoy Tea Co. in Lenexa both opened their doors in Johnson County during the pandemic.

It’s all in the blend, says Bill Beyer, who owns the Savoy Tea Co. with his wife and daughter. Beyer opened the location after starting two closer to home in Arkansas.

“One of the main things is we formulate and blend all of our own teas,” said Beyer of the shop at 16953 City Center Drive. “We’re one of a handful of importers and master tea blenders and tea specialists in the country that can do that on a big scale.”

Those teas come directly from small family farms around the world.

“We love being creative. We try to create blends that aren’t out there: Fun, unique combinations of flavors,” said Beyer said, who chose to expand in the Kansas City area as they visit family here often.

The most popular of the 140 flavors offered is a cinnamon-orange blend that Beyer described as a “liquid Red Hot” without sugar. Another blend, the Gentleman & Scholar, is meant to evoke the smokiness of a shot of whiskey. Beyer calls the latter polarizing.

“People love it, or they just don’t want it anywhere near them,” he said.

In addition to tea you can take home to brew, Savoy also sells tea by the cup, in regular, latte or sparkling form.

“We have a lot of folks who enjoy exploring and discovering new teas, new flavor combinations. As far as flavor goes, it’s really all over page,” he said.

For Lauren Farmer, owner of Socially Tea KC at 10586 South Ridgeview Road, the tea business was a post-college graduation gamble.

“The pandemic had started, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, and there weren’t necessarily a lot of opportunities to find a job at that point,” she said.

She’d always loved tea and started researching how to turn that passion into a business.

Her twist on the tea shop concept is to turn it into an opportunity for social gatherings.

She offers tea flights. Just like a wine flight, it gives the sipper an opportunity to try smaller amounts of several flavors to see what they enjoy.

“People come in, they try the teas, they talk to me about what they’re liking, what they’re not liking. They talk to each other about what they like and what they don’t like,” she said. “You get that whole experience of it not being just that fast thing you grab in a drive-thru.”

She has a Chicago distributor that supplies her 130 blends made from tea produced by farmers in Asia. Favorites among her customers are a honeybush hazelnut herbal tea that some use to substitute for coffee and a green lemon cream tea that she says is reminiscent of lemon meringue pie.

Olathe seemed the logical location for the Olathe North High School graduate to set up shop. She hopes to see more people from the community stop by.

“We’re super friendly, and we want to meet them, and we want to meet them where they are. We don’t want them to think that tea is something that’s only enjoyed by a certain group of people or that there’s huge price restraints on that,” she said. “We’ll show you the easiest way to brew it. We’ll show you the big fancy things you can buy, but we’ll also show you the simple things you can do.”

For more information on the shops visit sociallyteakc.com or savoytea.com.

This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Brewing up new business: These JoCo shops offer customers an alternative to coffee."