Community Highlights: Meet Emilie Jackson of Emilie’s French Teas | A French Tea Room & Tea Shop

Today we’d like to introduce you to Emilie Jackson

Hi Emilie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My love for tea started when I was little. My mom always drank tea at home in France and at night after dinner we would often have what we call a “tisane”, French word for herbal tea to relax together in the living room.
Tea followed me in my most stressful years of college study. I would always have a pot of tea near me as I studied for my exams. It is also the first thing I offer to my friends who come to our home.
It is later in life that I started to want to learn more about the intricacies of the tea plant aka Camellia Sinensis and all the health benefits that it has to offer. One of my dream was to have an entire wall dedicated to teas. It is my husband who pushed me in pursuing my passion in including it to our Holistic Health Center’s business model.
This was nearly 10 years ago.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There is an expression in France I like to use because it applies to many things in life:
“La vie n’est pas un long fleuve tranquille.” which roughly translate to “Life is not a long, quiet/calm river.”
As I am sure you already know from the many interviews you had with other business owners, when you own your company you have to wear several hats. Sometimes hats that do not fit you as well, because let’s face it; you cannot be good at everything… Or at least speaking for myself, I cannot.

From finding the right location, to learning about leasehold improvement and remodelation to just get the correct information from the city for the different permits and so on… Opening your business can be exciting at times but also daunting. I would say a lot of things can be figured out thanks to different business programs and organizations available in the Kansas City area like UMKC Entrepreneur Programs, SBA, KCSourceLink and so on…

However to me what was and is the most difficult are the many things you cannot control, like construction done in Wornall Rd for instance when we just opened our business which affected client’s accessibility to our businesses, a global pandemic and a recession to name a few… An other thing that sometimes as a business owner, I am shy to talk about is my personal struggles aka imposter syndrome to name one that can sometimes stop or slow down one’s personal and professional growth.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Our French Tea Room / Salon de Thé—a first in the area—features several imported tea brands from France and is the perfect place to relax and connect with the community. We are the only one carrying those brands in the US with that much variety.
We carry more than 70 types of loose leaf teas (black/red, pu’erh, oolong, green, white and tisanes), they are all hand picked no pesticides and one of our brand is European Organic.

We have worked hard to provide a product and a service of quality that I feel represent well the teas that I used to drink in France. For the tea room, we wanted to recreate the atmosphere of the tea rooms that I enjoyed visiting with my mother when I was living in France; quiet and inviting that transport you somewhere else just by being there.

In the tea shop area you can buy everything tea. All the teas can be purchased by the ounce and you will find a wide variety of teaware and other tea gifts to prepare your perfect cup of tea at home.

In addition to tea service and tea products, we specialize in tea education. I love learning and I love sharing what I have learned, in fact I am taking a new training as a Tea Sommelier so I can teach more classes to our public that is getting more and more interested in tea culture and tea cultivation.

So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Quality vs. quantity.

I cannot cater for everybody neither do I want to do so. That is why competition exists, to offer different things to the public and offer variety without a need to copy one another but rather fill a need that was not filled before.

I like to walk my talk. Tea is about slowing down and being more connected with nature and our surroundings meaning people and community. I cannot do that if I have too big of a class or if I have to sacrifice the quality of my products for the sake of selling more.

Pricing:

• Tea Service: $4,90 – $13 (you can order tea and pastries a la carte)
• Tea by the ounce: starts at $7

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.emiliesfrenchteas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emiliesfrenchteas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emiliesfrenchteas/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/emilies-french-teas-kansas-city