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TeaGuide website may include links to other sites on the Internet that
are owned and operated by third parties ("external sites").
TeaGuide and its
administrators are not responsible for the availability of or the
content located on or through any external site. Please contact the site
administrator, webmaster, or owner for those external sites if
you have any concerns regarding such links or the content located on
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About
TeaGuide
...
The
directory to thousands of tea rooms and tea shops
in more than fifty countries around the world. Extensive
details -- information that you asked for -- plus unbiased reviews written by tea lovers like
yourself.
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Some of
you have asked us these questions about TeaGuide
or about going out to tea ...
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Why
TeaGuide?
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Where
do your tea listings come from?
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Are
all the listings accurate?
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What
do all the descriptive details actually mean for a tea room
or tea shop customer?
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Do
I need reservations for tea?
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What
if there's no tea room near me?
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How
can I list my tea room or tea shop and what does
it cost?
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Why
don't you include lunch or "tea luncheon" as a
descriptive option in your listings?
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How
do I submit a review of a tea room I've visited, or let you
know that it has closed?
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How
long does it take you to publish a listing or a review
after I submit it?
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If
my tea room or tea shop gets a bad review
will you let me post a response?
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Why
doesn't TeaGuide
post ratings and rankings of tea rooms?
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Why
don't all the listings include a website link and email
address?
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Do
the listings include locator maps?
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Why
don't the listings include ZIP codes?
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Why
is the TeaGuide website
so "low-tech?"
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How
can I place a photo with my TeaGuide
listing, and further promote my tea room/tea
shop?
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What's
with the "fur" alerts?
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Can
I reprint TeaGuide
listings or reviews?
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Do
you advertise TeaGuide?
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Can
I advertise my tea-related business at TeaGuide?
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Can
I make a donation to TeaGuide?
Or become a corporate sponsor?
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How
do I swap links with TeaGuide?
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Where
can I chat with tea lovers about tea rooms, tea shops, and
other tea topics?
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Why TeaGuide?
We like to go out for
tea -- sometimes just a good "cuppa," or something a bit more formal (or
unusual). We also enjoy finding shops that sell interesting teas and tea accessories. So
we were always asking our tea friends to recommend tea shops in different places that we
travel to.
It occurred to us that other tea lovers might like this
information, so we started keeping track of tea rooms we'd visited. We
happily shared this information with any tea lover who asked --
mostly through a (now-defunct) tea discussion group, as well as offline.
In early 1997 we began posting our Guide to shops, tea rooms, restaurants, hotel rooms, inns, casual
settings, and historic or cultural sites that
serve afternoon tea, cream tea, high tea (supper), or a decent cuppa at any time of day, and/or sell tea and
accessories in a retail shop, on our The
Cat-Tea Corner website. Little
by little, tea lovers everywhere contacted us to
include their favourite tea places in the listings. Of
course tea lovers enjoy sharing their love of tea with others,
and we are grateful that so many of you have contributed to TeaGuide
and continue to do so.
As tea
drinkers ourselves, we know how difficult it is to find good
tea, especially when travelling. We likewise understand how much work
is involved in running a tea retail or service business, and would like to
see every tea room or tea shop succeed. It's advantageous for
everyone when both sellers and consumers get together. That is why TeaGuide
came about, and this continues to be our objective.
TeaGuide
is a unique publication: we are and always have been a
non-commercial venture. TeaGuide
was created by tea lovers to share the joy of finding good tea
with other tea drinkers, and to provide free promotion to tea
room and tea shop owners to help them be around for a good long
time!
TeaGuide
was not developed as a marketing tool to sell products,
nor do we buy any type of advertising. This is a "mom and
pop" operation: we have no staff to
maintain the TeaGuide
website, to do research, or for promotional purposes. Our budget
consists of whatever income is derived from limited advertising
and affiliate sales. Our promotions consist mostly of links
from other websites, especially linkbacks from tea room/tea shop
websites.
We are now
what we always have been (even when we were hosted at The
Cat-Tea Corner): a free, no-strings, non-commercial service
for tea lovers, whether they sell or buy tea. No agenda, no
sales pitch. We do not send spam. And our
site has always been specifically designed to provide maximum
details about a tea business, for both customer convenience and
for the benefit of tea business owners.
TeaGuide
has always followed a policy not to copy from other websites or
publications,
although we are aware that TeaGuide,
in full or in part, in content and/or format, has been copied by
various other entities, both online and off-line. Unlike other entities, however, we are
not in the business of sales, but in the business of sharing the
enjoyment of tea. We believe this sentiment is shared by the
thousands of readers who visit us every day.
(TeaGuide
opened a separate gift site in the spring of 2007. Our
readers are under no obligation to visit that site or to make a
purchase.)
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Where do your
tea listings come from?
About half
of our tea room and tea shop listings were submitted either by
tea room/tea shop owners or by tea lovers who visited them. The
rest were researched through continuing online and off-line
searches, mostly through media resources but also by contacting
local tourist bureaus, travel services, professional groups, and
the like. A lot of "leg work" has gone into compiling TeaGuide
listings over the past eleven-plus years.
We do not
copy our listing information from any other "tea
directory" entities. (We do link
to some of the better ones.) All of our listings are either
submitted to us or have been empirically researched. We do not
pay for listings, nor do we pay or otherwise compensate anyone to provide listing
information to us.
TeaGuide
is the only tea directory that credits all submissions -- and
we're the only comprehensive tea directory that links to other
tea room listing websites.
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Are all the
listings accurate?
The
descriptions and details we provide with each listing are the
most up-to-date information we have. All businesses change over
time: new ones open, others close. They may move their location,
change their hours, alter their menus, add new services,
eliminate prior offerings. We update TeaGuide
almost daily, but it is impossible for any dining or shopping
guide to be 100% accurate. That is why we include the following
notice on all our directory pages: "We recommend that you call ahead to
confirm the details listed here." This is especially true if you
plan to drive a long distance.
We're very
grateful when our
readers alert us to changes, updates, openings, and closings,
either by email
or through our Update submittal form.
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What do
all the descriptive details actually mean for a tea room or tea
shop customer?
Some of
the features are described at the top of this
page under What do the designations mean? Our Update
Form, which is filled out by the tea room or tea shop owner,
describes in detail all available choices. The tea room
or tea shop owner tells us which services they offer, and we include
each one in their TeaGuide
listing.
With
nearly 150 available descriptive choices, TeaGuide
makes it easy for you to find the type of tea room or tea shop you're looking for.
Our standardized descriptions help you compare tea rooms and
choose the one(s) that offer exactly what you're looking for,
either by browsing or by using your browser's search capability.
If you'd
like to find, for example, a place to hold a Red Hat event in New Jersey,
visit the New Jersey page. You can scroll through to find the
Red Hat images, or use your browser's Find feature (Ctrl+F, or
Edit/Find) and
in the Find box enter the words "Red Hat" (without the
"quotation" marks) to locate a venue that
caters to Red Hatters.
You can similarly search each page for
any other offerings. For example, find a
spot that invites you to bring your children (Ctrl+F and "child"),
has a
Victorian ambiance (Ctrl+F and "Victorian"), a tea
room that offers WiFi (Ctrl+F and "Internet") or cream
teas (Ctrl+F and "cream tea"). And so on.
Just keep
in mind the advice in Are all the listings accurate? above
about calling ahead to verify details.
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Do I need
reservations for tea?
TeaGuide
recommends that you call ahead to a tea room when you
are visiting for the first time to confirm their hours and their
reservations policy. (Whenever possibly we include this
information in the tea room's listing, but either one can, of
course, change without notice.)
Even if
you're familiar with the tea room, it's a good idea to call
ahead if you're traveling a distance or celebrating a special
event, to ensure that they can accommodate you at your chosen
date and time. You don't want to make plans with friends or
family and then arrive to discover that the tea room is closed
for vacation, or they have booked a party for the entire
premises, or they've simply changed their business hours.
Generally
speaking, plan to make reservations for afternoon tea and Royal
tea service (Royal tea is an afternoon tea that includes a glass
of champagne, sherry, or wine), although there are some tea
venues that can accommodate walk-ins for full tea service. If you're making
last-minute plans, you may want to consider a hotel tea rather
than a small tea room.
Cream
teas, dessert teas, and "just a cuppa" are often
available on a walk-in basis. Groups of more than four people
for any tea service would do well to call ahead to ask if reservations are
necessary, because most tea rooms have limited seating
space.
Some tea venues require that you provide credit card information
when you make your reservation. Others may automatically add a
service charge (or tip). Ask about their policies in advance!
Expect
reservations to be required for theme teas (like Mother's Day),
special events (book signings, for example), and tea tastings, classes, or
workshops. Depending on the popularity of the event, you may
need to reserve several weeks in advance.
If you
make a reservation, honour it! If you must cancel, try to
give the tea room at least 24 hours notice. Remember that most
tea rooms are fairly small and the owners do most of the work.
Also keep in mind that tea rooms often prepare special "tea
food" only when teas are reserved, and may charge your
credit card for no-shows if they cannot re-book the table.
(Empty tables and seats are costly to a tea room owner.)
Are you
planning a private tea party -- a group booking for meetings,
showers, birthdays, etc.), perhaps with a customized menu? These
always require advance reservations, along with a signed
contract and a deposit. Normally you will be given a deadline
date for a final guest count; whatever total number guests you
provide is the number of meals you should expect to pay for,
even if some of them do not attend. Be
sure to check with the tea room to ensure that you know how far
in advance you need to book private parties.
One more
thing ... If you or any member of your group requires special
dietary accommodation (vegetarian, vegan, diabetic, lactose-free,
low-fat, celiac, etc.) be sure to call ahead by at least one day
(preferably more) to ask whether the tea venue can prepare a
special meal. Be aware that the answer may be that they cannot
or will not, so be prepared to make other arrangements. Most
importantly, do not expect a tea room to be able to alter their
menu on the spot, because you are likely to be disappointed when
they tell you that they simply cannot accommodate. When this information is available to us, TeaGuide
notes that a tea room offers vegetarian menu choices and/or will
try to accommodate special diets with advance notice -- so look
for these notations in our listings!
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What if
there's no tea room near me? Here
are some suggestions:
Get
together with a group of friends for "round robin"
teas. Each week (or bi-weekly, or monthly) rotate which person
plays host/ess in their home, preparing and serving tea to the
rest of the group. Traditional, contemporary, or even picnic
style -- the choice is yours!
Go
"ethnic!" Visit a local Asian restaurant. Chinese,
Japanese, Indian, and other Asian-cuisine restaurants usually
serve good teas to accompany meals. Order several appetizers (to
share or not) -- the first cup or potful is often included in
the price. You'll usually find oolong, black, or jasmine tea at
Chinese restaurants; green tea at Japanese restaurants; masala
chai and black teas at Indian restaurants. Some serve only a
house tea, others offer a choice. (Most restaurants will welcome
your mid-afternoon visit -- the hours between 3pm and 6pm are
generally their slow times.)
You can
usually find a good cuppa and a selection of pastries at
bookstore cafés. Barnes & Noble, Borders, and many local
bookshops offer a spot to sip and read (and often have WiFi
connections too).
See if a
local bakery has a café section where you can enjoy a cuppa
with a treat or two from their display cases.
Some
natural foods stores offer a spot for a healthful snack. Select
a cup of tea or tisane and some whole-grain baked goods, grab a
seat, and do some healthy-people watching.
Ask your
favourite restaurant if they accommodate private parties, then
have a chat with the chef to select a tea-time menu and get a
group of people together for tea. This, of course, requires some
advanced planning.
And if you
happen to find a great place for tea that isn't listed at TeaGuide, don't forget to let
us know about it!
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How can I
list my tea room or tea shop and what does it cost?
You can
list your tea room or tea shop -- or a tea room or tea shop
you've visited -- in TeaGuide
by filling out and submitting our Update
form. Please provide as much information as you can,
especially if you are the owner, manager, or employee of the tea
room. (Detailed descriptions benefit
both tea lovers looking for tea, and tea businesses themselves.) Or
contact
us by email with all the details.
Listings
in TeaGuide are free of
charge. Each listing includes extensive details. If you
would like to include any additional information in your listing
we offer customized listings with our Featured
Tea Rooms promotional service.
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Why don't
you include lunch or "tea luncheon" as a descriptive
option in your listings? TeaGuide
is dedicated to listing resources for tea, the beverage and the
meals. When our readers visit the tea rooms in our directory,
they expect to find top-quality tea and/or a specific tea
service (afternoon tea, cream tea, gong-fu tea, and so on). This
is what defines "tea room" for TeaGuide.
You may be
familiar with a style of restaurant called tea room or tearoom
that specializes in serving a light lunch, and
sometimes breakfast and/or dinner. While you may be able to get a good cuppa at some lunch
rooms, most (unfortunately) offer only restaurant-grade tea as
one option on their beverage menus. Some lunch rooms refer to
lunch as "tea," but actually serve no specific tea meal.
A lunch room's focus is on food, not tea. While
generally lunch room/tearooms are charming dining spots, TeaGuide's
listings are limited to tea rooms (tea houses, tea parlours, tea
salons, tea shops) that cater to tea drinkers.
The
tea lover who expects tea service at a lunchroom/tearoom will
be disappointed, and this may result in a
negative reader review. We know how disheartening it is for
business owners to receive negative reviews. We also do not want
to disappoint or confuse our tea-loving readers. So TeaGuide
tries to avoid including lunch rooms in our tea room
listings. One way
we can accomplish this is to
eliminate lunch as a descriptive option. Many of the
tea rooms listed here serve lunch as well as tea, and some serve
other meals as well. We suggest you
call ahead to enquire. For similar reasons we do not list
any restaurant meals (breakfast, brunch, dinner, supper) other than tea
service.
TeaGuide's
mission is to promote tea; we are a specialty guide, not a
general restaurant directory. Occasionally we
may inadvertently list a lunch room -- especially when they
refer to their meal
offering as "tea" -- but we trust that our readers will alert us to any
errors in our listings.
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How do I
submit a review of a tea room I've visited, or let you know that
it has closed?
To submit
a review, fill out and send our Review
form.
To notify
us of a business that has closed or moved, or has new hours or a
new owner, fill out and send our
Update form.
Or just share your own favourite tea spots with other tea lovers.
If you
have any difficulty submitting the forms, contact
us by email. (Occasionally the forms may be incompatible
with security software or devices.)
This
information with links is posted on each page of our
directory.
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How long
does it take you to publish a listing or a review after I submit
it? We
publish new listings, updates, and reviews as quickly as
possible.
TeaGuide
and The Cat-Tea Corner are non-commercial sites, and we have no
dedicated web staff (see Why TeaGuide
above). We receive hundreds of new listings, updates
(changes or closures), reviews, and correspondence of all kinds
on a wide range of topics every month. Every so often we see a
surge of submissions -- sometimes three or four times the usual
number in a given week or month. All we can do is try to
get to each one as soon as humanly possible.
Occasionally there is a problem with the submission itself. Maybe
there's a glitch and we don't receive it, or some basic
information is missing or incorrect. If a message ends up
"lost" in cyberspace there's not much we can do. When
we receive an update or review with a typo or omission, there may be a
delay while we check the facts. (The most common reason why
reviews are not published is that the reviewer has not provided
their email address. TeaGuide
does not send spam nor sell email addresses, but we do verify
that the review has been sent from an active email address. TeaGuide
is unable to publish anonymous reviews.)
When new
listing and update submissions indicate that they will place a
link to TeaGuide
on their website, we may wait a day or more to allow time for
the link to TeaGuide
to be placed; then we can include a link in the listing straight
away. Click here to learn
more about including a link to your tea room/tea shop website.
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If my tea
room or tea shop gets a bad review will you let me post a
response?
Ever since
TeaGuide's inception in
1996, its online debut in 1997, and our posting of reviews
shortly after, we have always been responsive to both tea
drinkers and tea room owners, especially those whose businesses
receive negative reviews.
We would,
of course, much prefer not to receive or post negative reviews. TeaGuide's
Review form includes this advice:
"Most owners work very hard and truly want to please their
customers. If you were unhappy with your tea room or tea shop
experience, we encourage you to contact the owner and explain
the problem." We'd much rather see customers follow this
advice than send us an uncomplimentary review. But we are
committed to posting unbiased reviews, and sometimes
these reviews will be negative.
For a time
we would
contact tea room owners to let them know there was a negative
review and ask them if they wanted to respond. Very few chose to
do so -- in fact, nearly all of them told us that they would
prefer to ask some of their customers to submit positive
reviews. The tea room owners explained that positive comments
written by happy customers had more impact than anything they
themselves could say.
Occasionally
we hear from a tea room owner who is troubled by a
negative review and wishes to respond. When this happens we
offer to post a response. A few tea room owners have taken us up
on this offer and we have in fact published their
responses. (If you are a tea room owner who wishes to respond to
a review, please keep your comments brief and professional.)
We have
also removed reviews when it is demonstrated that they are
factually inaccurate (for example, when the details provided do
not match the identified tea room), and we do our best to screen
out reviews whose authors appear to be using a negative review
to promote another business or to intentionally mislead our
readers in any way. Fortunately this does not happen
often.
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Why
doesn't TeaGuide post
ratings and rankings of tea rooms?
A number
of tea room owners have asked us to rank the tea rooms in our
directory. But we're not going to. Ever. We'd rather have TeaGuide
help promote all hard-working
tea room owners. Here's why:
Let's say
there are two nearby tea rooms that excel at everything: both
serve delicious tea and food, service at either one is
impeccable, and both places look gorgeous. Tea room #1 is
blessed with a clientele that enjoys computing and writing
reviews. Customers of tea room #2, however -- while enjoying
themselves as much as #1's customers -- are less inclined to
being online, or maybe don't care to write reviews. The
result? Two wonderful tea rooms, but one has gotten numerous
reviews and has a listing displaying very high marks, while the
other (just as good, remember) has gotten only a few reviews and
so they find themselves ranked lower.
If you're
a tea drinker looking for an enjoyable place to drink good tea,
which would you be more likely to choose? Most people, if they
had to select only one, would pick the more highly-rated tea
room. Not necessarily because it's a better place, but simply
because more reviews have been written. It happens all the
time -- and it just ain't right!
We at TeaGuide
do not want to be involved in ranking tea rooms. We prefer to
provide detailed, unbiased, standardized descriptions (usually
provided by the tea room's owner). This encourages comparison of
the services and features each of our tea-drinking readers may
be looking for.
Many of
the tea rooms listed in TeaGuide
have in fact been reviewed by tea lovers who have visited them,
and our readers are welcome to browse these reviews for more
information. But we at TeaGuide
don't feel we should use a ranking system
to promote one tea room at the expense of another.
We just don't see the value of pitting tea
rooms against each other, nor of ranking tea rooms within
arbitrary and meaningless geographical areas. If you're
interested in tea rooms in the Philadelphia area, does it really
matter if there's a more highly-rated tea room in Pittsburgh?
And we don't see what good it does to compare apples to oranges,
as it were: if you want to visit an Asian style tea bar,
does it really matter if a Victorian style tea room down the street
has gotten a higher rating?
While we don't
mean to take anything away from tea rooms whose customers like
to publicly rave about them, neither do we want to
essentially sabotage another tea room simply because their
customers are less fulsome.
TeaGuide
encourages all tea lovers to make decisions about which tea room
to visit based on our extensive descriptions, balanced with any reviews that accompany the tea
room's listing. And
while we cannot accommodate the handful of owners
who've asked us to institute ratings, we do encourage all tea
room owners to provide excellent teas, foods, service, and
ambiance. Good words will most certainly get out about you if
you do!
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Why don't all
the listings include a website link and email address?
In
response to readers' requests, we provide extensive detailed
information about each tea room or tea shop. As often as not our
listings offer more information about a tea room than their own
website does, and does so in a concise and easy-to-read format.
So you find what you're looking for in one place; no need to
search through TeaGuide and
then through a tea room's website to find the information you
want -- it's all here. And having all the information in one
place allows you to quickly and easily compare the features of
one tea room to those of another, to help you decide which you'd
like to visit.
If a tea
room or tea shop owner asks us to include a link to their
website in their listing we will do so, asking only that they
post a linkback to TeaGuide
on their site. We're very grateful to the many generous tea
business owners who link to TeaGuide.
And, of
course, not all tea rooms or tea shops have websites.
We don't
post tea rooms' email addresses for several reasons: Many tea
room owners do not use email. Or they use it very infrequently,
so a message might go unread for days, weeks, or months. Most
tea rooms do not accept reservations via email. And, in general,
email users --
including tea room owners -- tend to change their email addresses
too frequently to keep track of them and ensure their accuracy.
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Why don't
the listings include ZIP codes?
TeaGuide
provides free access to the world's most complete and
comprehensive directory of tea rooms, tea shops, and other tea
venues worldwide to anyone and everyone who has World Wide Web
access. Unfortunately this means that along with genuine tea
lovers, any spammer, junk mailer, and "copycat" can
view the listings too.
While TeaGuide
content is copyrighted, there seem to be any number
of Web users who "help themselves" to TeaGuide
listings to populate their online or print
publications, or to send spam or junk snailmail. TeaGuide
recently received an email from one such junk mailer.
He expressed his frustration that TeaGuide
listings do not include ZIP codes -- thus making it
difficult to create junk mailing lists. TeaGuide's
response was: Thank you for letting us know that our safeguards
work. TeaGuide
respects the busy entrepreneurs who own and operate
retail/service tea businesses, so we do not send junk mail or spam
email, nor provide junk/spam mailing lists. If you are a tea
room or tea shop owner whose business is listed in TeaGuide
and you receive this kind of contact, you can be sure that it
did not come from us. TeaGuide
does offer a variety of fee-based promotional
services to carefully vetted advertisers whose products or
services we believe to be of interest to our readers. A number
of businesses advertise with TeaGuide,
either via a display advertisement on our site or direct to our
Tea Entrepreneurs Association (TEA). We hope that if you are in
the market for tea-related products or services -- retail or B2B
-- you will choose to visit TeaGuide's
legitimate, honest supporters. High-quality
tea-related businesses are welcome to contact TeaGuide
for details about our promotional services. See our Advertising
page for more information.
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Do the
listings include locator maps?
We currently
add locator maps to all new TeaGuide listings
in USA and Canada. Just click the link
next to a listing to see a MapQuest® map, which also features
driving directions. And we're working on adding mapping to all listings where available (some international locations
cannot be mapped), but it may take some time for us to map all
of the thousands of TeaGuide
listings. Do be patient with us!
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Why is the TeaGuide
website so "low-tech?"
When we
first started publishing TeaGuide
in 1997, many of our readers were using old computers and outdated
browsers. To allow access to TeaGuide
to as many tea lovers as possible, we avoided sophisticated
building elements that could crash their systems or
otherwise make our site inaccessible.
These
days, so many people are using security devices -- anti-virus
software, spam blockers, firewalls, etc. -- that once again we
are hearing from readers who appreciate that they can access TeaGuide
without problems.
From time
to time we will upgrade the format of TeaGuide,
but we'll always try to keep it accessible -- and that will
probably mean relatively low-tech.
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How can I
place a photo with my TeaGuide listing,
and further promote my tea room/tea shop? TeaGuide is
and always has been a non-commercial venture. Our directory was
not created (nor copied) for the purpose of selling products --
because we have no products to sell.
TeaGuide
does provide extensive detailed information about each
tea room or tea shop so our readers can search or compare features and
find the one(s) that suit their tastes. The information we
include in the listings reflects the details our readers have
most frequently requested -- often more information than you'll
find on a tea room's website.
As a
non-commercial service, we don't have a dedicated web server or
unlimited resources for hosting an extensive number of photos.
In order for us to maintain sufficient web server space and
bandwidth we offer a fee-based promotional service, Featured Tea Rooms, and
this includes placing a photo with your TeaGuide
listing, as well as any additional descriptive details you wish
to provide.
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What's with
the "fur" alerts?
Simply
put, we don't like when people wear fur. Never have. We find it
an offensive and pointless practice.
When we
first started publishing TeaGuide,
we knew that some tea rooms offered "dress-up" furs to
their customers. We decided not to intrude our personal feelings
into TeaGuide listings. But
then we started hearing from many of our readers, both in
reviews and through direct contact, that they didn't like the
idea of furs in tea rooms either. Several tea lovers asked if we
could mark the tea rooms that use fur so they could
avoid going there. That is why you see "fur alerts."
There are many ways to enjoy tea, and many types of tea service.
Fur is never a required element of any tea
time, whether Victorian style or otherwise.
Teatime
should be soothing and enjoyable. We encourage everyone to enjoy
your tea time as you like, wearing whatever you please. But the
fact is that being around furs makes a good number of tea
drinkers -- and people in general -- feel uncomfortable. And
that makes for a very unpleasant teatime. So long as our readers
wish to avoid these types of unpleasant experiences, and ask us to provide this
alert service, we will
continue to do so.
Occasionally
a reader will write to us to point out that Victorians usually
wore furs to tea, and that it is a "traditional" part
of the tea experience. To those who share this viewpoint, we'd
like to ask if you also wear heavy boned corsets that impede
your breathing? Do you wear layers and layers of heavy clothing
and petticoats? Do you wear a chemise in lieu of a brassiere? Do
you wear spats, garters, and celluloid collars? Do
you use macassar or other heavy oils in your hair? Do you limit
tea times to only the wealthiest strata of society? Do you lock
up your teas so the hired help can't steal them? Do you employ
young children and orphans to do the dirtiest work of cleaning up after your
tea party, then pay them wages that are barely subsistence? All of these were traditional Victorian tea
practices too, although no one in modern times seems to want to
replicate these experiences.
Tea is
served at a variety of styles of tea rooms. Victorian tea rooms
are popular, but you can also enjoy excellent tea times at tea
lounges, traditional British tea shops, Asian style tea houses,
and many, many others. (Do you dress up as a Mandarin to have
tea at a Chinese style tea house? Wear a kilt to a Scottish
style tea room, or a sari to an Indian style tea shop?)
We
understand that many people are not bothered by the use of fur. Some
rationalize the use of "vintage" furs. Everyone is
entitled to their own opinions and practices -- including TeaGuide.
This is
our statement on fur:
We at TeaGuide
do not condone the use of fur for any
purpose. Offering fur for "dress-up" or as a
decoration is not a necessary component for an enjoyable
teatime. Compassionate tea lovers may wish to either voice
complaints (politely, of course) to the owners of any tea room
or tea shop that uses fur, or simply avoid going there. We post
fur warnings in response to the many tea lovers who have
complained to us about this practice, and we particularly thank those
of you who alert us and our readers about tea rooms that promote
the use of fur. Learn
more about the cruelty of fur. In the words of Associated
Humane Societies: "Wearing fur is not attractive -- it only
bespeaks of ignorance and indifference to life."
TeaGuide
bears no obligation to promote tea rooms and shops that engage in
the practice of decorating or offering dress-up with furs. When
a tea business owner notifies us that they have discontinued
this practice and removed all furs from their tea room/shop, we
are delighted to place a full listing and help them attract
customers (see #1 above).
Sadly,
when we do receive correspondence from people who disagree with our
dislike of the use of fur in tea rooms, much of it takes an unpleasant
form. This seems
to us to speak more about the correspondent than about any issue. It
is our policy to delete unpleasant and/or anonymous correspondence
-- on any topic -- unread and without responding to the sender.
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Can I reprint
TeaGuide listings or
reviews?
All TeaGuide
materials are copyrighted and may not be reprinted or published
elsewhere.
Individual
tea lovers may print out listings for their personal
reference when visiting tea rooms and tea shops. These
print-outs may not be transferred to any other party for any
purpose.
Under very
specific and limited circumstances, and only by parties who
accept our reprint terms, brief excerpts from
reviews posted at TeaGuide
may be reproduced.
Any other
reproduction of our listings, reviews, and/or other
materials, whether electronically, in print, or in any other
format, has not received permission from TeaGuide
and is in violation of
U.S. and international copyright law.
Please see
our Copyrights & Reprints section for more details.
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Do you
advertise TeaGuide?
No. TeaGuide
is a non-commercial venture with no advertising budget. Our only
"advertising" is through online links from other
websites, and offline mentions in various print media.
To link to
TeaGuide or swap links, see
our Linkback
section.
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Can I
advertise my tea-related business at TeaGuide?
TeaGuide
accepts a limited number of advertisements from high-quality
businesses whose content is appropriate for our readers. For
more information, please see our Advertising
section.
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Can I make a
donation to TeaGuide? Or
become a corporate sponsor?
Thank you
for the thought, but TeaGuide
does not accept donations. If you would like to make a donation
in our name, please contact us
and we will supply you with a
brief list of organizations that we support. Or see our Advertising
section.
To discuss
corporate sponsorship of TeaGuide,
please contact us with particulars.
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How do I swap
links with TeaGuide?
TeaGuide
swaps links with a limited number of high-quality related
websites. For more details, see our Links
page.
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Where can I
chat with tea lovers about tea rooms, tea shops, and other tea
topics?
That's an
easy one!
You're
invited to join Teamail, our
consumer-oriented discussion group.
Tea
business owners should also join TEA-Online,
our business-to-business professional networking group.
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TeaGuide
What's
your tea destination?™
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TeaGuide
has not been copied from any other
source, nor are we affiliated with any other
tea room or tea shop guide, online or in
print.
Listings
from TeaGuide
may not be used to compile or
publish any other collection of listings, in
any format, online or offline, for any
purpose, without
permission. Any other tea room/tea shop
directory, whether online or in print, that
has copied our listings has done so
WITHOUT our permission.
PLEASE
NOTE THAT THESE LISTINGS MAY NOT BE USED FOR
ANY COMMERCIAL PURPOSE WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN
PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER. PROPER USE
CREDIT IS REQUIRED. CONTACT
US FOR PERMISSION.
THESE
LISTINGS ARE PROVIDED AS A SERVICE TO
INDIVIDUALS SEEKING TEA ROOMS OR TEA
MERCHANTS FOR PERSONAL VISITS, AND TO TEA ROOM
AND TEA MERCHANT OWNERS WISHING TO ATTRACT
IN-PERSON RETAIL CUSTOMERS. PERSONS
WHO WISH TO VISIT TEA ROOMS AND/OR TEA SHOPS
MAY PRINT OUT INDIVIDUAL LISTINGS FOR THEIR
OWN PERSONAL USE.
Thank
you to our visitors who have the integrity to
respect our copyright and our many years of
work to compile and maintain this Guide. We
are pleased to share our love of tea with you.
--
TeaGuide™
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What
do the descriptions mean? |
| [Tea room]
serves ready-to-drink tea for on- or off-premises
consumption
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[Tea merchant] sells (retail) tea for home preparation, either bulk or in packages, and
optionally tea accessories. |
| [Tea room
and merchant] both serves and sells tea. |
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Listings designated with a pen and paper have been reviewed.
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Look for this symbol for tea
rooms that host Red Hat parties or meetings, sell Red Hat gifts,
or offer special promotions for Red Hat members.
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Into the boba craze? Look for the bubble tea symbol!
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| Need
clarification of any other listing details? You can see
all available options on our Update
page. |
| Listings are
alphabetical by country, U.S. state or Canadian province, and city. |
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