When I venture outside of Garden City for shopping, particularly to the Roosevelt Field Mall, I'm usually not thrilled about it. This particular day, however, I was pleasantly surprised- might I even say... thrilled with my experience that I might find myself driving east on Old Country Road a little more frequently.
Inside Garden City was invited for a tea education and introduction to DAVIDsTEA. DAVIDsTEA is a Canadian company with over 100 stores in Canada and they're now expanding into the American market. The Roosevelt Field store is situated on the main level right near Microsoft- a good location in my opinion- easy to find and pretty close to the outskirts of the mall so I could avoid the center of the mall and all it's chaos.
I'm not a big tea person, but I enjoy it, so I headed over to check it out and boy was I glad I did. When you enter DAVIDsTEA, you immediately drink in (no pun intended) the chic, well organized set-up. Bright lights, a clean look, lots of tea paraphernalia and a huge (I mean huge) wall of tea. They have over 150 flavors and blends. I was getting excited.
I met two employees- Erika and Deborah- who were both friendly, helpful and enthusiastic about tea. And very willing to educate if you are interested! Part of DAVIDsTEA philosophy is to make the tea experience so user-friendly that it easily becomes a part of your lifestyle. From the start, I was impressed with their tea canisters. Each was topped with a sniffer lid- a lid with a small pocket in it which held a sample of the tea. This let me smell the tea without sticking my nose (and germs) into the whole canister to inhale the aroma. This kept the tea safe and clean inside. Imagine hundreds of people per day coming in and smelling tea without these little dividers? Not so much.
Erika showed me some teas that had tiny candies inside for flavor (and they looked super cute as well), like teeny red candy canes or orange pumpkins amidst the leaves. Pretty cute- especially if you're giving it as a gift. Speaking of, there were plenty of cute tea gifting ideas. I'm sure you're familiar with the chocolate Advent calendars that come out for Christmas? DAVIDsTEA has them called the 24 Days of Tea with a different tea for each day instead of chocolate. There's also 12 Teas of Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, The Winter Collection and 8 Days of Tea sampler tea sets. Adorbs and festively packed to make perfect gifts.
If you're buying for a tea novice, or if you yourself are a tea novice but like the idea of loose teas and want to start dabbling in them, DAVIDsTEA make it easy. You can buy a small box of tea filters which are basically empty tea bags. You put a scoop of tea in them, cinch them up and you've got your very own home-made tea bag. Now all you have to do is dunk it in some hot water. Easy enough. And the bags are biodegradable and chlorine-free, unlike traditional
teabags.
DAVIDsTEA goes green whenever they can and that's pretty often. For instance, the tea brewed at the stores each day gets composted at the day's end. Also, their "plastic" cups, which look like all other plastic cups you see around, for cool drinks are made of corn (yes, corn!) and are completely biodegradable. You can't put a hot drink in them because they'll melt, but I was certainly impressed to learn that DAVIDsTEA is this eco-friendly. Did I mention that if you bring in your own container, you get a discount on the tea leaves? Plus, all of the plastic they use is BPA-free too!
As far as cool drinks, beside the traditional iced teas, DAVIDsTEA has tea pops. These are deliciously flavored iced tea drinks- you select the tea you want, they use a soda stream to carbonate it and add sweetener (if you like), over ice. The result- a refreshing, natural alternative to sugary sweet summer drinks. I am happy to say I found my new warm weather drink!
The massive color coded tea wall was impressive. They have a lot of interesting flavors (like sugar plum forest) and blends. For the super serious (not me), they also have less common teas such as bai hao yin zhen and sencha ashikubo. DAVIDsTEA boasts over 70 organic teas and interestingly, when preparing organic tea they use a specific organic steeper and spoon so as not to cross-contaminate with the non-organic teas. Pretty conscientious, huh?
There's also a special selection of Garden to Cup teas. These teas come straight from the source- small tea estates where the leaves are bought directly and put on the shelves as quickly as possible in order to preserve their freshness. Blue Mountain Twirl is one of these gems- a unique green tea from an estate in India.
You'll find lots of great gift ideas here and a few treats for yourself too such as tea pots, an assortment of tea travel mugs, tea latte mugs, matcha sets and my fave: what DAVIDsTEA calls "the perfect tea cup" (I now own one and I must say... it is pretty perfect).
DAVIDsTEA impressed me with their tea, their service and their dedication to leaving a green footprint. I'm on my way to becoming a "tea person" and may have just found my happy place, at least inside Roosevelt Field Mall.
http://www.davidstea.com
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