Writer: Katriina Korhonen, Student member, Business Partners Club
We had an exciting event organized by our club Business Partners where we visited a tea shop and tearoom TeeMaa on the 19th of November. It happened also to be the first day of snow in Helsinki, which made it a nice warm and cozy way to start the Saturday morning with some nice hot tea tasting.
The event kicked off with the owners of the TeeMaa, Peng Luo and Xinyuan Sui, sharing their story of how they founded the business and walking us through the whole journey of how they established a tea shop in Helsinki – about their growth, learning about the business environment and adapting to customer needs as well as surviving COVID-19 as small business owners. We learned about their background and what sparked their interest in wanting to be an entrepreneur as well as sharing their insights about co-working closely together as business partners. The event continued with a fascinating history of tea culture in China and learning about the Chinese Gongfu tea brewing style. We also learned about the differences between different tea sorts and how certain teas are made. Some of the teas we tried were for example white tea “Moonlight White” from China and green tea from Japan called “Karigane Gyuokuro – Kukicha”. Peng and Xinyuan also explained how they select and import teas from countries such as China, Taiwan, and South Korea. Usually, they get the teas straight from the local farmers. After the tea tasting, we continued our lively discussion about entrepreneurship and following our dreams, and at the end, we had a chance to explore the tea shop and buy our favorites to also enjoy at home during this cold wintertime.
More information about TeeMaa: https://www.teemaa.fi/fi/
