Today we’d like to introduce you to Nguyen, Shirley, and Ronnie.
Hi Nguyen, Shirley, and Ronnie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
The 3 of us have been long time friends, and Prosperitea was born out of a mutual love for teas and seeing a lack of good matcha around. We have all spent extensive time in Japan as well, and are also all Chinese (Shirley and Ronnie) or Viet (Nguyen is half Chinese half Viet), and have both a cultural connection to tea as well as personal passions in it.
Currently, we do popups and preorders as well as private catering.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
While it’s exciting that matcha is in the limelight right now, it also means that sourcing consistently has been difficult, with soaring prices and supply shortages. In addition, we all work full time jobs or have other priorities, so building a business with limited money and time is a constant challenge that we know is not unique to us.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Prosperitea is here to highlight quality, strong teas and all natural, fresh ingredients. We hand whisk every serving of matcha and houjicha, and can proudly say that we offer one of the strongest matcha lattes here in San Diego. Additionally, we take inspiration from our travels and cultures to develop new flavor profiles that change seasonally, to match the freshness of what is available. We believe in honoring the traditional methods and flavor profiles of the teas that we serve, while also putting our own modern and seasonal twist on them. We aim to make the experience of enjoying high quality tea more accessible, and to share with people both the health properties of tea as well as the strong caffeine benefits that many are not aware of. In addition to serving matcha and houjicha, we also want to spotlight the highly caffeinated Hong Kong milk tea, which is largely unknown to people here.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Starting a small business is a major risk, and since we refuse to compromise the quality of our ingredients, ensuring we have consistent sources has been incredibly difficult as matcha becomes more scarce. Additionally, with so many matcha and tea places around, it can be hard to compete with franchises or businesses with larger marketing budgets or storefronts, even when we are confident that our tea and ingredients are of higher quality.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/prosperitea.sd
- Other: Email: prosperitea.sd@gmail.com
Image Credits
Image Credit for the 2 with the glass window panes in the background: Instagran: @nittyeats
