In August 1992, the 7th day of July, or the "Ghost Month", of the Chinese calendar, Teahouse was founded in the metropolitan city of Kaohsiung, in Southern Taiwan.

With no prior business experience and no idea of how much a cup of tea should cost, Teahouse was open for business.

The grand opening of Teahouse was chaotic and the customers acted as though they were owners, serving themselves and even helping take care of other incoming customers.

Unlike most businesses, we made treating our customers as friends our top priority and set the idea of making money aside. Because of the new friendships created at Teahouse, customers would, in their spare time, visit Teahouse not only for a drink, but for friendly conversation as well. Making a sale was no longer the issue when it came to our customers. They were our friends and our new priority was to make them feel as comfortable and as satisfied as possible, after all, what are friends for? After a while, our customer began giving us the most valuable information of all, their feedback. Our customers would even analyze the market and inform us of current trends in hopes that we too could follow and benefit from those trends. With the support and aid of our customers, we were able to define Teahouse's signature flavor of green tea accompanied by chewy balls of brown sugar flavored tapioca within our first year of business.

Word of our new success spread like wild fire and customers began telling friends, family and co-workers all about the new flavor of Teahouse. This word of mouth advertising was and is to this day the cornerstone of Teahouses phenomenal success. The memory of those customers who helped build this company into what it is today will be in the hearts of the Teahouse family always.

Moving forward, many of those same customers and others leaving to study in the U.S. gave us our next milestone idea: bring this wonderful tapioca tea drink to the U.S. so that they can have it whenever they want!

After one year of intensive research, Teahouse decided to bring this traditional cream tea and the new Teahouse flavor across the great blue and opened the first U.S. Teahouse inside the Hong Kong City Mall in Houston, Texas on April 1st, 2000. This new store was an instant success despite another chaotic grand opening. This new store made history as the very first traditional Taiwanese cream teahouse in the Houston area. Although we were not the only ones to offer tapioca cream tea in Houston, we were the only ones who kept the traditional Taiwanese taste and offered our outstanding, friendly customer service. We always take the time to explain our concept and answer any questions new customers might have, even to this day and we love doing it.

Our vision was to see people shopping at Hong Kong City Mall walking around holding a cup with the Teahouse logo and within the first few months of business that vision was realized. A few years later, we made another bold move and decide to introduce Teahouse to the American market outside of the Chinatown area. After careful review of the Houston market, we decided on a retail strip located at the intersection of Westheimer and S. Shepherd, a busy intersection with many larger, established competitors like Starbucks, Smoothie King and other smaller, local coffee shops. This non-Chinatown location, a suicide attempt as seen by some, was mocked and ridiculed by many other tea drink makers; they thought we were crazy. At first, upon opening, we began to think they were right as it was very difficult and business was slow. We attributed this slow start to the fact that to most Americans, this drink was something that they have never experienced before. We received many questions and even after explaining our products, most customers at the new location were still afraid and were not interested in trying our drinks.

We did not give up. Instead of throwing in the towel and accepting defeat, we used this experience as a lesson and began to brainstorm. As a result, we created a new policy for new customers:
"If you don't like the drink you order, we can exchange it for you free of charge."

Flower tea and espresso selections have also been added to our great menu over the years. Teahouse has come a long way and has been featured on many local media markets such as channels 2, 8, 11, 13 and 26, papers such as the Houston Chronicle, Houston Press and Paper City and even local radio Top 40 station, 104.1 FM KRBE. Opportunities such as these have made Teahouse Houston's hang out spot for everyone, regardless of race, sex, age or anything else for that matter!

We continue to value the feedback we receive from our customers and are always open to suggestions. We're constantly looking for ways to improve and better provide top-notch service to our customers.
We'll keep the doors open for you!