Introduction
It was our mistress who came up with the name, "Formosa Tea House". There are many reasons why we choose to use this name. First of all, it means a clean, beautiful, and peace island. Second is to remember our home land, for which Formosa is also another name for Taiwan . The third reason is to signify its unique meaning in a culture. And the last is to allow the local to easily remember the store name.
During year 2000, we weren't able to find any work and our finance has slowly depleted. We only have around ten thousand dollars left in the bank. We decided that we need to find a way to balance our living spending and so we decided to open a shop of some sort. However I don't know what kind of store I should open up. I've thinking for couple days, and then the question of what kind of store can help the growth of people and the local community? What kind of store and bring people a healthier life? What kind of store can allow us to learn English and still maintain our life quality? Then I remember that all my family members are all work in the tea house business, so I decide to open a tea house.
After we decided and told our friends, a lot of them tried to talk us out of it. They said that western people are accustoming to coffee and they wouldn't want to drink teas. They only know western tea and we would have no customer if we sell Chinese teas. However there is no way back, so we can only go forward with the faith within our heart.
We have searched for the right store location for a long time, whether the rent is too high or the location is not good. We only had ten thousand left and we don't want to borrow money from our parents. Finally we see a light at the last minute; a Cambodian has opened a tailor shop on the 73 University Ave. and wanted to move to Vancouver . He wanted to rent the place out and the rent is pretty cheat ($350/month), it's about 300m 2 . So we rent the place.
We spend about $3000 to do a little renovation. The shop can only fit around 10 seats. It's not very high end but it's clean and comfortable. It has a scene of early Taiwan and Japan , simple Chinese tea with some selection of juice and coffee. The working hour is from 11 am till 5 pm. The total income for first month is only $450. It was from 2002/2/22 to 2002/3/22 , it's a big shock to me but I didn't give up. I made a few changes within the tea house. I added a few traditional Taiwanese dish, get rid of some juice and coffee, and added teas from Taiwan and China . The income from second month doubled from first month and doubled again for the third month. Then I added an outside seat and decorated the inside with more plants to make the tea house more pleasant.
During the summer time, the business becomes better, the food sold out very quickly. Because we don't have a kitchen, we close the tea house whenever we sold all the food. Sometimes we close around 2 or 3 pm. Even though we feel bad for the customer, but it's hard to grasp the business flow. We didn't want to let the customer to eat the food from the day before. We rather made a bit less and prevent the food to save for the next day. There is this one customer, he came to our tea house for four times wanted to buy sushi but always sold out. And till the fifth time, he waited outside for us to open up the tea house in the morning. We find out later he was buying sushi for her girlfriend. Our heart feels very touched.
Next year, the business became very well, customers usually has to line up to the road. Thus we made an agreement with the landlord to expand the tea house to the back and added about 10 more seats. The income for the second year grew 30% from the first year.
Till the third year, our parent urges us to buy a store for our own. However we didn't have that much money then and my mother agreed to lend us money. At first I didn't want to borrow money from my parent but they said that they will only come to Canada if we have a store of our own (because I am the only son in the family, I wanted my family to live together). So we borrowed $1,700,000 Taiwan dollar (about $75,000 CDN) from our parent and borrowed 2,000,000 from Taiwan Hua Nan Bank. We bought the restaurant that was auctioned by the bank (Big Mama). At the time, a lot friend advise us not the buy that restaurant. Some said the Feng Shui of that restaurant is bad. Some said this restaurant has been had 9 owners and only 1 or 2 become successful, the others were whether go out of business or had accident ( the previous owner killed a customer by accident outside of the entrance). For all those reason, they advised me not to buy the place. However I was thinking:¡¨I am not doing anything bad, and has an elevated wish. The gods should help me.¡¨ So I bought the restaurant that I had now ( 186 Prince St .)
The day we moved to this new location is 2004/3/1 . We added some fast food to the menu and also hired a helper. However because a lot of people didn't know that our location has moved, our business for the first month weren't that good. Our expenses increases, the incomes weren't able to cancel out with the expenses. Even though it becomes better during April and May, but we have to spend on two houses. It seems to be a waste of time and money, we decided to sell the house at 210 Mount Edward and live at the second and third floor of the tea house. One reason is to decrease expenses and the other to manage easily.
Ever since we came to the new location, the business started to get busy till June. It has grown 30% in 2005. At the end of 2005, we opened a franchise at the Ellena Creek Plaza and hired 2-3 workers. However the main store becomes too busy and there was 2 workers quitting during July and August and weren't able to hire new one. We closed the Ellena store in October. The business dropped about 10%. However thanks to the local newspaper for introducing our tea house in September, it added a lot of new customer to our tea house. Also a lot of our customer gives us good advises. It allows us to progress better and better and so is the business.