October 24, 2018

Meet Will and Ani Bailey of California Tea House

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Will and Ani Bailey.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Will and Ani. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
California Tea House is a family owned tea store specializing in artisanal loose leaf tea and organic herbal tea blends.

Our roots started in the local California farmer’s markets where our exclusive tea collection of estate loose teas and delicious dessert tea blends became so popular that we decided to take our business venture online.

We still only use mini-drums to create our small batch blends, so you receive the finest quality and freshest ingredients in every cup.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As a family business, we took it upon ourselves to do everything on our own when we started the company.

Naturally, this became very taxing on our family, working excruciatingly long hours 7 days a week. When we were ready to hire help, finding the right people with the same passion was also a struggle.

We are very fortunate now to have a well-oiled machine.

Please tell us about California Tea House.
We specialize in small-batch, custom-blended loose leaf teas. We formulate our own blends using local ingredients with only the finest quality of ingredients and seek for what is natural, organic and pure. We take pride in surprising our customers with our gourmet blends making them as passionate about tea as we have been.

We are most proud of our product innovations. Excitement invokes creativity. Some unique lines we created are a tea formulated just for dogs to help with car sickness and stress called Machu’s Blend, a low-calorie line of dessert teas without the guilt and a knock-you-out Bedtime Chai to soothe even the most troubled sleeper.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I traveled to the southern part of Spain as an adolescent.

I was enamored by the ornate Moorish tea houses (teterias) with their pillow-floor seats surrounding drumlike tables and being presented with a booklet of aromatic floral and herbal selection of exotic teas poured from adorning teapots. It was magical and inspirational.

This experience has always connected with my spirit and can explain my passion for tea.

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