CLOSING THE CHAPTER OF CHA-OLOGY

Thank you for the many messages and concerns about our closure later this year.

I have spoken about it multiple times since our 9 year anniversary, but in case you missed those times, I will try to explain it better. 

In the shortest form possible:

We are closing our ‘Cha-ology’ chapter. We are NOT leaving our love and passion for Japanese tea behind. At this moment, we plan to stay in our current space and want to do a refurbishment and enter our next chapter under a new name! 

If you have time to read a rather long essay, here goes:

10 years of dedicating our lives is a rather long time. The initial vision, to opening, to quickly being presented with the reality of what we didn't want to do. Remember the days when we sat 10 people on the platform and 2 at the tea bar? In the first year we moved the queue from inside to outside of the teahouse. Those days were mainly filled with anxiety and tears. All we wanted to do was to provide a space for some calming moments. Our approach was wrong. We stopped doing all the baked sweets (remember those roll cake, tarts, cheesecakes, gateau au chocolat, purin, tiramisu, and brownies!). We don't want to be a dessert house as it doesn’t allow us and our guests to focus on the quality of the tea. We experienced first hand so many times guests visiting for the desserts with no care for the teas, and while we could have pursued that path it really would not have made us happy. In all honesty that period of time made the most money (when we weren't in a post pandemic living crisis with wars happening around the world). But, we decided to change. We trialled reservations on one table only in year 2 and then a few months later moved to reservation only. We moved the baked sweets to a preorder collection day. We were and are still serving wagashi (wagashi is Japanese sweets, not like westernised Japanese sweets such as matcha roll cake). We were changing little by little. Because it has always been just the two of us. Change was never quick.

We moved from 12 guests to 6 guests.
The biggest change was when we finally took the leap of faith, did a small refurbishment in 2020 February (the night before the refurbishment we got broken into), reopened in mid March for one week and then the pandemic and 3 rounds of lockdown in Manchester hit us. Despite that, we continued with our vision. We had started introducing a course menu in 2019 as an option and different seasonal and non seasonal course menus soon became the only choices. Since then, despite the craziness of the pandemic, we finally felt we were heading in the direction we wanted to, and my tears have since then become mainly happy tears. We have been refining our service and the journey we want to take our guests on all these years, and under the name Cha-ology and in the current space we feel we have reached a ceiling. 

Even though I don't really think we are business people from the way we operate, being in the "business scene" for close to 10 years is quite a journey. We have said many goodbyes over these years. Some move on with their next chapter of life. Some no longer visit because we can no longer be what they need. If we ran Cha-ology for others in that way, we know that it would no longer be able to spark joy and passion in our guests, and would soon become soulless and unfulfilling. 

Nevertheless, through thick and thin, a tiny group of you have stayed. You never questioned why we made changes or judged us, only showing us kindness and support. It has been more than we could ever ask for. We never set up to target the mass market. We have never worked with influencers or social media platforms. In the background while you may not see, we work so hard and have made so many sacrifices to pursue this path, but we have always had dreams and ideas for the future that ‘Cha-ology’ can not achieve. 

The times when we receive emails that address ‘to the Cha-ology team’, I always wonder... I believe a lot of people who have never visited us or even visited us once or twice probably thought that we were staff or part of a bigger team when in fact, everything in the last almost 10 years has all been done just by the two of us. Everything from going in person to visit the tea farms, artists, and chasen master, to serving tea in the teahouse, making wagashi, telling the stories behind the tea, ingredients, or the ware we use, taking photos, writing newsletters, Instagram stories and posts, managing the website and bookings, wiping the platform, cleaning the bathroom, hoovering, mopping, washing towels, handwashing all the ware, polishing the glasses, menu designs, packing tea parcels, making qr cards, writing postcards/messages for parcels, all the crazy amount of admin and paperwork and emails, keeping track of stock levels, researching and sourcing ingredients, visiting our partners, running training sessions or tastings for our partners, special tasting events for our guests, planning the seasonal menu and experimenting all the wagashi and tea pairings, baking for the monthly preorder collection and Christmas (wagashi is not baking)… every small and big thing, it has always just been the two of us.

When I say we have sacrificed a lot to forge the path we want to follow, I absolutely mean it. And I wouldn't change it to be any other way. We are so lucky to be able to work with some of Japan’s most respected tea farmer, producers, most humble and talented artists and of course the 20th generation chasen master. And we want to continue to share their hard work, their visions, blended with ours, to our guests. 

We feel there is a need to end the chapter of Cha-ology. The name itself we no longer feel attached to, as it doesn't truly express or translate to what we do. Still some people think we are a dessert house.

In addition to the change of the name, we will also completely discontinue the preorder collection and takeaway drinks service. Last Christmas was my last Christmas baking that I have done for Cha-ology 10 years. These days made us internally guilty because of the long waiting time and the queue, even though it was only once a month, 8-9 times a year. They brought back some dark memories of the first year of Cha-ology that I didn't enjoy. But at the same time, after 10 years, I still couldn't find matcha or Japaese flavoured sweets that I like so I continue to do little bit once a month. The last two preorder collection and takeaway drinks service will be 29th March and 25th/26th July (26th July is when we become 10 years old). In the future format, we will not be doing takeaway drinks anymore. I do however want to do wagashi box (may not be monthly) but the collection style will be a more relaxing one, no queuing, may even share a cup of tea together.

Ideally we want to be closer to nature and build a teahouse there, but it seems impossible for us to achieve at this stage, financially and logistically. So, we are trying to imagine a different layout to our current space - and that's where we are currently at. Only this time it would take much longer to build.

I hope to have more updates in the coming months. But if you wish to say goodbye to this Cha-ology chapter, there is still limited time to visit us between now and end of August!

Thank you for reading this essay!

M+J