rantings of a tea addled brain

I sit here after basically drinking tea all day long, a lovely Bai Mu Dan & now I need to vent. Customers are wonderful & also weird. Someone came in the other day & asked me, the owner of a tea house that sells bulk tea, if there was any place downtown I would recommend to buy tea. Huh?! I replied fairly politely, "besides here, no." WTF! You can buy tea wherever you want, but our teas are all organic. Think about the fact that tea is picked, then withered & processed, there is no cleaning or rinsing. So if you have chemicals on your tea plant, you are now pouring hot water on those chemicals & drinking them down. Tea should be organic. I think all food should be organic, but I am a crazy eco/green/liberal/tea drinking/prius driving/solar panels on house/greywater/native plant/permaculture/chicken raising/Los Angelino. So there!
Here are some pictures of my chickens, my neighbors are upset with them right now. Well I guess I should say they are upset with me, I was letting them free range in the whole backyard. Now they are coop bound, it's a big coop & they are fine. I need to be a better neighbor, have been at the shop too much, yard is a mess & my garden is in need of some major weeding/tending. Filled up my green bin in a couple hours yesterday on my day off. Well sort of day off, had bills & food to pick up so more like 1/2 day off. I think that siptea may have to become more of a tea/dessert place less of a lunch place. Too much work & not enough pay off. We have changed the hours, opening later in the mornings, 10am and closing earlier 7pm, except on Friday.
Tell me what you think siptea should be. Would like to expand the retail with more eco-friendly products, and cut down on the food.
What do you think?

Educating & Adapting

Yesterday a woman came in and ordered a green tea, I will clarify, a tropical pineapple green tea. We do have lots of people come in for green tea. Unlike the grocery store there is not just one "green" tea, we have a few, and that confuses some people, because they do sell tea called "green" tea in the grocery store, right next to the box labeled, tea. She gets her tropical pineapple and asked if it could be made hotter. I said it was steeped at a lower temp. because of the type of tea it is, so it isn't bitter. She just wanted it hotter & asked to microwave it, which we don't have. So the conversation continued with her asking if she came in & asked for it made with hotter water, would I do that? I replied, I would warn you it would be bitter & would probably suggest a tea that is made with hotter water. She seemed to be testing me to see if I would make a bad cup of tea if I was asked to, the final answer is yes. That is the art of tea, you can make it any way you like, I would just like people to have tea prepared the way it is recommended first, then they can make it anyway they want. I am trying to educate as well as serve the community.
Being adaptable is the only way to survive & I would give any customer what they want, after saying my disclaimer. Another way we are adapting is that we are going to change our hours. Starting May 5th we will be open from 10am to 6pm Tuesday through Friday, with Saturday & Sunday hours staying the same, 11am to 6pm. The economic downturn has been rough on everyone & to stay here and survive we need to adapt and shorten our hours. Hopefully in 6 months we will be open longer hours.