Meet Michael Pahl | Tea Store Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Pahl and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Taking a risk on a business is one of the scariest decisions I’ve made. When the business dream in a notebook moves to the checkbook I immediately began to question if my idea was as good as I thought it was. For me, my biggest risk is finances and I try to take it as slowly as possible. Therefore we are starting with an online store and pop up markets. We wanted to get into the business with as little exposure as possible to test our idea. Once we feel that we have played out our business model (vendors, prices, branding, etc.) we’ll be confident in taking on more risk.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Big Handsome Tea is a premium loose leaf tea vendor. We love loose leaf tea because it provides big bold flavors, from Pomegranate Hibiscus to Hazelnut to Peach Apricot. What separates us is our variety of flavors. We have over 35 different teas and we’re always experimenting with more. For example, we have five different types of chai and three different matchas.
To help navigate the variety, we offer the tea tower sampler. The tea tower has three teas instead of one full size, and we offer suggested tea bundles or full customization of your tower.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

A favorite date of ours is going to Four Day Weekend, a improv comedy club.
Cart Blanche is a wonderful restaurant but the bakery in the mornings is a great kept secret.
We love White Rock Coffee’s Chai Latte, and La La Land has the best matcha in town.
A beloved dinner spot is Yoshi Shabu Shabu in Richardson.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are endless people in our lives to thank. We’d like to shoutout here Ben Nockles from Common Place and Kristy from Urban Tea House. Ben showed us it is possible to make life all our own. He opened a bookshop in OKC that inspired us to one day have our own business.
Kristy owns OKC’s best tea shop, Ueban Tea House, where we were first fell in love with tea. Kristy also gave us so many pointers on how to get started in the tea business.
We wouldn’t be who we are without them!

Website: Www.big handsome tea.com

Instagram: @big_handsome_tea

Facebook: Bighandsometea

Image Credits
Kaitlyn Weatherly Creative