Location Location Location. We’ve always been told that’s the #1 rule for success in business. And every time we looked at the future of Tea Zaanti, we kept coming back to our struggle over location. In our current space the drawbacks include:
No parking out front thanks to a bus stop and a fire hydrant.
Three to four parking spots out back that are very tricky to find down a beat up alley.
Minimal foot traffic as the neighborhood is primarily residential.
Proximity to a school, limiting our ability to explore expanding our offering of wine or tea cocktails.
While these all make moving sound like a no brainer, we love our building… the warm, inviting space of a house with a cozy front porch. The flower beds and the garden out back. The fact that our traffic has been growing by 30% YOY and no one wants to risk impacting that. With our lease renewal coming up January 2020, we’ve spent most of the past year exploring options all over town and weighing the pros and cons of renting vs. owning.
In our mind, the space either had to be in an established neighborhood or it needed to be an easy to find destination in an up and coming area of town. We looked at the other tea shops in town and debated if it’s better to be closer (establish the SLC tea district?) or further away and differentiate. Of utmost importance to us was the ability to explore a liquor license and reasonable outdoor space to build an attractive patio and pergola. Lastly, our gut just had to tell BOTH of us, “THIS feels right.”
Enter 1944 South 1100 East. It had been on the market for some time, but when we called on it, they were under contract. It seemed an ideal location:
Near the heart of Sugar House with lots of organic foot traffic
A neighborhood that continues to grow with new apartments going up every day
Only one true coffee shop (Sugar House Coffee - which is always BUSY BUSY BUSY) and coffee counters at Barnes & Noble and Whole Foods. Lots of room for more opportunities in the hot beverage space
Street parking and six spots out back, easily accessed from 1100 East and McClelland St.
Outside seating - room to build a patio out front, a great front porch and some cozy seating along the north property line
It’s a house! So much character to work with.
Zoning allows for a restaurant liquor license (incidentally, check out this cool tool that Salt Lake County built to help with property research)
Several months later, we noticed the For Sale sign was still up, so we called again… turns out the purchaser wanted to level the house for development. Enter US. We let the realtor know we had no such intention, which appealed to the owners (and the neighbors), and before we knew it, we were placing a back up offer. As due diligence deadlines approached, the original purchaser backed out and we found ourselves in first position. Several drive by visits later, conversations with a few neighbors and hours spent pouring over measurements… we found ourselves moving forward.
And so the journey begins.
