Business Q&A: Hooker Tea Leaves No Doubts About Quality

ST. PETERSBURG - Ray Ritola began as an employee at Hooker Tea Company in St. Petersburg last May after graduating from Eckerd College.

Three months later he was promoted to manager; four months after that the 22-year-old was the new owner-operator of the downtown retail store.

Hooker Tea was founded by Shawn Hooker – who remains the owner of the franchise and another store in Tampa – when he became frustrated in his quest for high quality alternatives to coffee.

His company now serves more than 100 of the best loose leaf teas available from around the world and brews them one cup at a time.

Hooker stepped back from day-to-day operations of the St. Pete store to focus on expanding the business and licensing opportunities, which include making its tea available to other stores. Hooker also has a joint effort with Cigar City Brewing to create tea-infused beers.

Foot traffic on Beach Drive provides most of the store's customer base, though Hooker Tea also sells teas and accessories online.

It is in the perfect location to take a break from shopping, cool off and relax in the expansive, elegant setting, where there is plenty of room to meet with others, or just sit quietly with a laptop and enjoy a fresh-made cup, along with a pastry.

Ritola sat down for a few minutes after work this week to answer a few questions about the business and the second-most consumed beverage in the world after water.

Q. What is unique about your teas?

A. It's all loose leaf blends as opposed to bag teas. Normally a finer cut, loose leaf tea in general brews a much bolder, stronger cup of tea. It's brewed in an open container so it allows all the leaves to fully expand for the freshest cup of tea you can get. All of our teas are brewed fresh for each and every customer. It's not something where you brew a vat of it and it sits around all day.

Q. What levels of caffeine can customers expect from tea?

A. We have teas that are naturally caffeine free – it's a different type of bush – to some that have the equivalent amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. It's a little bit different of a caffeine compound than coffee, where you get the so-called spikes and crashes. Caffeine in tea is a little more gradual. You get more of a slow growth to it and then it gives you a slow residual drop off as well.

Q. How else are you marketing your product?
A.  We work now with Cigar City Brewing, and we have tea-infused beers and tea-infused sangria. One is a blend [of tea] we've developed along with the Dali Museum. It's called the Dali Bold and Spicy. Cigar City makes the Dali Bold and Spicy beer that goes with it as well. We make tea-infused oatmeal and we're starting to work on tea-infused salad dressings and things like that. To take just the basics of something so small and be able to create something so large out of it is just a neat [marketing] concept.

Q. Where do your teas come from?

A. All over the world. Our green teas and white teas are from Japan and China. We get our Rooibos blend straight from South Africa. Mates are from South America. We don't get more than 10 percent of our stock from one distributor, we try to create a global network.

Q. Can you describe how the Hooker Tea Company franchise will operate?

A. It's going to be a little different than your stereotypical franchise. It's not going to be like McDonald's where they all look exactly the same and serve the same thing and there's specific regulations. There are freedoms for us to be able to explore a larger retail portion or food portion. There are just some set strict guidelines that you'll see to keep the uniform look to the stores.

Q. What do you see for the future of the franchise?

A. Corporate as a whole is working on expanding. Personally, I'm looking to have just this location for the first two to three years, so I can get a feel for it. I want to get into the environment to know that it's something I want to do for the rest of my life and something I know I'm capable of doing. Ideally I also want to see about bringing it to New England, New York City and Boston. I feel it's a unique niche that if I can find the right location it could be very successful.

Q. What are your goals as a business owner?

A. My two objectives when I took over the company were to reduce cost and consumption and become as eco-friendly as I can. I changed out all the lighting. All of the bags we get in will be from 100 percent recycled products and 100 percent post-consumer recyclable. I also wanted to support the local community. We get the juices from a local orange grower, the berries from a local farmer and anything else we can. Even though we get the teas from all over the world the smaller items we support the local community because they're the ones that support us.