In this issue:

• Artist for April: Dr. Nguyen Thai
  
• Easter Hours
• Renewal and Recycling

Artist of the Month: Dr. Nguyen Thai

We are very proud this month to be displaying the photography of Dr. Nguyen Thai.  Photography is his hobby and passion, and with his travels he has brought back stunning vistas and intimate portraits.  Many of his photos have won awards.  From his biography:

Dr. Nguyen Thai is a well-respected physician in Houston. He devotes his free time for his serious hobby of photography. He specializes in using large format camera to capture the scenic photos of the great outdoor.

He travels to the Far East extensively, especially China and Vietnam, to take pictures of the most beautiful landscapes. He also enjoys the great nature and likes to explore the new frontier.

Easter Hours

Note: we will be closed this Sunday, April 8, to celebrate the Easter holiday with family and friends.  We'll reopen Tuesday (remember, we're always closed Mondays!)

Renewal and Recycling

Easter is about renewal, and that got us to thinking about recycling.  And being green.  Thinking globally while acting locally, and all that.  We are avid recyclers at home, and decided to bring this practice to our shop as well.  We take an aggressive, multi-pronged approach to waste reduction:

Source reduction: it all starts with eliminating waste at the source.  No waste up front, no waste at the end.  One of the key factors in source reduction is reducing packaging.  When we first started in the food business, we thought that food service companies would be the way to get lower cost foods, since they're buying in volume, and in essence are wholesalers.  Turns out that's not true: food service companies, at least at our scale, are more about convenience than price.  You get the convenience of food delivery straight to your shop, but prices are no better than at a grocery story..  Furthermore, it comes at a serious environmental cost: packaging.  lot's of packaging!  Hand in hand with that is less fresh food (that's why they need to be packed so tight!).  So, one major aspect of our source reduction program is to shop fresh, by buying local grocery stores and farmers markets.  Little to no packaging with fresh foods.  Packaging waste has dropped dramatically.

Right-sizing our meals is another key to source reduction.  Folks, we hate it when ya'll don't eat all your veggies!  All that food going into the garbage is a sad sight.  It's a trick in some segments of the restaurant industry to always over-size their food portions - makes it seem like you're getting value for your money; yeah, you know those kind of restaurants.  Sure, some people take home the extras in "doggy bags", but a lot, a whole lot, of food is just wasted everyday in restaurants around the nation.  Our solution to this is to right-size our meals.  Thanks to Alyson for this, with her European food experience: she's always contrasting European food portions with the "huge" American sizes typical here.  So, we take the "European approach", providing delicious, satisfying but not overwhelming portions.  And we're happy when bussing tables, finding all those empty plates ... very little food wasted :)

Another aspect of source reduction is to buy organic.  While not all our teas are certified organic, we try hard to buy organic while we're searching for the best tasting teas we can find.  In any case, all our teas come from small plantations.  With organic and small producers, we know we're reducing waste at the source, in the form of less pesticides, wasteful farming practices, and such.

Reuse:  We're actually quite loathe to give out our to-go cups!  They cost money, but more importantly we just picture them adding to all the landfills.  Piles and piles of paper cups, cup holders, straws, plates, etc.  We prefer instead to serve all our teas and food on china and other durable ware.  That is, washable and reusable ware.  It's not a novel concept, but if you think about all the fast food places and drink shops with their "single-use packaging" (a preference with the City Health Departments, sadly), you realize: that's a lot of waste!  Washing the dishes is a good thing :)

Recycle:  We still output a lot of metal cans, aluminum cans, and cardboard boxes every week.  Do you think we're tossing all those into the garbage can? Think again!! Fortunately, there's a Recycling Center on our way home every night, so we take everything possible for recycling: our boxes and cans, bottles, old newspapers, etc.  We're surprised that more restaurants aren't trying this: go behind the scenes of your average restaurant and look at the garbage bins.  One, you'll notice how many large, room-size bins they have, and two, you'll be shocked to see how many cardboard boxes are piled up every day!  At least the cardboard boxes and newspapers can be easily recycled (we'll admit that the cans and bottles sometimes get a bit messy, requiring some "preprocessing", so to speak).  We're proud, though, to meet at least a few of our fellow restaurateurs at the recycling center every night.  Hello guys!

Another key aspect of our recycling program is composting.  Yep, tea leaves make for some very good compost.  We've got a nice rich pile in our garden right now, stacked with a year's worth of composted tea leaves.  Recently, a 5th grade student at Mark Twain Elementary did his science fair project on tea composting.  He measured our output at about 3 lbs of wet tea leaves per day, and when he experimented with the composting process, discovered that by 6 weeks the leaves were well on their way to becoming good ole' hummus.  So, none of the used tea leaves go in the garbage, nor any of your wasted veggies!

What's the end result of all this?  Well, at a local cost level, we save a lot of money: we're able to use the City's garbage service, with only once-a-week pickup of our two outdoor garbage cans, same number as allowed in any household.  And we're proud to note that rarely is the second can ever full at the end of the week. Garbage service alone is a big expense for many restaurants, so we're very happy to get by with very minimal pickups.  And, we know we're not contributing that much to our landfills.  It's our little contribution toward being green.

In recognition of our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle  approach, we've added a way for you all to participate (besides eating all the veggies on your plate!):  tea tins are now on sale.  These simple tins are durable, air-tight, double-lidded containers, and are very effective against tea's two main enemies: light and humidity.  So, they're great for storing and organizing all your teas.  Buy our tins and bring them in every time you purchase some new bulk tea.  We'll fill your tin to order, reuse the paper bag they're stored in, and you save 10% off every bulk tea purchase.

Renewingly yours,