Celebrating our Camden Inspire runners up — Camden Tea Shop

We spoke to the Camden Tea Shop, based in Camden Market, to find out what sets them apart…

On December 6th, 2018 at Camden Collective, we celebrated the best of Camden and Euston’s local independent businesses whose every day jobs are to offer a unique service, attract new customers and stand out from the crowd. It’s not easy, but what they do make our towns the special places they are. Running your own business in London means high rents and a hugely competitive market. But every day, these business owners continue to astound us with their commitment, innovation and fresh ideas.

Putting it to the public vote, we asked you to show your appreciation. 70 businesses took part this year across 6 categories and we had an amazing 6,000 votes, which we only hope to double next year! We’ve celebrated the winners, but it’s about time that we caught up with the runners up. We’ve already spoken to The Cheese Bar, Rudy’s Dirty Vegan Diner and Camden People’s Theatre, now it’s time for a spotlight on gourmet loose tea specialists, Camden Tea Shop, who came second in our ‘Most Vibrant Retail’ category, just behind Mega City Comics.

The Camden Tea Shop was formed out of tea expert Daniel’s dream and passion for sharing his favourite loose-leaf teas with friends, and due to their popularity, he began a humble stall on Camden Market’s historic East Yard. As they grew they decided to become known as Camden Tea to pay homage to the community that provided them with a space to expand their business. They continue to specialise in infusion blends inspired by cultures from around the globe, all of which can be enjoyed in the wonderful Camden Market.

We decided to speak to Gaby, who works with Founder Daniel, Michaela and other shop staff to hear more about how they select their wide range of teas:

“Our first tea was a pure herbal tea called Hibiscus that wasn’t well known and surprised a lot of people with its amazing flavour. Since then we have strived to find quality ingredients with flavour combinations that people will enjoy from the classics to our own unique recipes. Our best sellers are Creamy Caramel Rooibos; a South African caffeine free sweet blend, Ripe Mango black tea, perfect for iced tea and Sakura Cha Japanese tea with an authentic recipe.

We are really lucky to have such involved customers; everyone has their own tea story to share with us. We get lots of suggestions on teas people want us to source for them. When we get enough requests we make it a permanent addition to one of our collections, which include; Tasteful Traveller, Pure Herbal, Ayurvedic, TEAchings, Experience Japan and Premium Imports.”

Daniel and Gaby have managed to create the perfect environment for tea lovers and for passers-by and they do this with their unique handpicked selection of teas tailored to each of their customer’s needs;

“Camden Tea is about enjoying the everyday, making each cup special and every customer special too. Our number one focus is our customer service getting us only 5 star reviews on Facebook and Google (as seen here: https://www.facebook.com/CamdenTeaCo/ which we are really proud of). Everyone who visits our tea shop, shops online or sees us at events gets the full Camden Tea experience. You get surrounded by an atmosphere of our enthusiasm, not just the purchase but also our mission to get you to fall in love with loose-leaf tea. We hand select other original items including Raw Honey jars from fellow independent brand Miod.co, a funky variety of tea strainers, a curated selection of origin coffee beans and our own branded tea hampers that will be expanding this year.”

Being based in Camden has been the perfect and most fitting place for them to start and grow their business. They spoke about its uniqueness;

“Community, creativity, diversity…we get every kind of visitor in our shop and they absolutely make our day. Days in the shop fly when we get lots of chatty customers coming to share their time with us.

Camden has been where we have grown and we have lots of exciting things coming up this year, for example, our first Camden Tea Club Café, a lovely local business that stocks a selection of our teas to local customers. It has also given us the chance to grow outside Camden, everyone is only ever happy to hear about new opportunities and supports us any way they can.”

So we asked Daniel what’s been his most memorable moment running the Camden Tea Shop? And he said;

“He was struck with lots of great achievements but the moment that he always remembers is when Camden Tea was named in the top 40 shops in London on Trip Advisor. It meant so much to us as it’s decided by customer feedback and means when we are anywhere in London we feel proud to tell people to come visit us in Camden. Coming second in the Camden Inspire Awards has only confirmed that customers recognise us as one of the best shops in London, which we’re incredibly grateful for.”

Let’s hope to see them in Camden Inspire 2020!

Follow the Camden Tea Shop:

Twitter: @CamdenTeaCo

Instagram: @camdenteaco

Website: https://camdentea.shop/