Teavana

What makes the visit here is not so much the types or quality of the teas, that is more a personal choice and can almost be done anywhere. It is the personality of the people working there. This place has a jewel in Lauren L.
Quick with a smile, learned the art of memorizing people’s names when meeting them. A warm friendly greeting when you first walk in. Not the «scary cheerleader» bubbly greeting, but a focused «I am interested in you» greeting.
She spent a lot of time helping my wife in choosing and making a tea blend for her. She made my wife feel like she was the only important person in the store. Good job. This place needs to make a serious effort to keep her.

As a starbucks shareholder I hate writing this, but the extremely obese elderly male employee was just sticking his bare hands in the large tea containers behind the counter. Thats extremely gross. We left when we saw that, and went to ridgedale just to get tea. Fire this man quickly and throw out all of the tea.

Awesome sales team and wonderful teas! Very knowledgeable staff. The starter tin and tea maker make the first purchase a bit pricey but once that is over it seems as if there is such an assortment of wonderful teas to choose from.
Great job!

Nice store and the tea is great, but the pushy salespeople really put me off. This is the kind of shop that I want to casually browse through. The staff makes me feel like I’m unwelcome if I’m not planning to make a big purchase. I understand they work on commission, but ultimately they lost my business. I won’t go into a shop where the staff makes me feel uncomfortable.

It is unfortunate because some of their product is actually good. Unfortunately the whole experience is a turn off with pushy sales people. Unfortunately nice Minnesotians (me) can get easily fleeced. Stand your ground and say no and watch the clerks get pouty or disengaged. They really need to change their commission policy and allow the product to sell itself, but wait, I walked out with $ 50 worth of tea!
Um, note to self: avoid this store if you are a push over for over priced tea, bad advice and multiple attempts to add on to your one purchase.

Somehow I got hooked on Teavana awhile ago. I was looking for some healthier alternatives to my customary «diet coke». The sales people here can get a little «pushy» but they are helpful and seem to be well informed when it comes to the variety of teas that they offer.
I’d first suggest trying a few of their samples offered throughout the store. If you like something just go with it. There are so many different combinations here it can get a little confusing and expensive. Prices vary by type of tea and they can easily sneak up on you here without even realizing it. If you make a purchase go with the minimum amount (¼ pound). Then you can decide if you like it and you can always go back for more.

It has great tea (though expensive with most $ 8-​$ 20 per 2 oz) and a fine selection of accessories, but the sales person, while helpful at first, was overly pushy as I was deciding on and making my purchase, pressuring me to buy more tea than I wanted and purchase needless overpriced add-​ons I don’t need.
I only wanted to buy 2 oz of tea just to try it out ($ 15!), but he kept trying to persuade me to buy a pound of it, and then he moved on to trying to sell me an $ 8 tin to put it in, and then a smaller $ 6 tin as I continued to resist. I had to say no at least 6 times during the sale before he just rang me up for the 2 oz I wanted. To top it all off, as he rang me up, he flatly said «On your health and happiness, you only spent $ 15 today.» Nice.
I consider this very disrespectful and rude. Had they been respectful to me, I probably would have returned, even as high as their prices are.
Since then, I’ve discovered a wonderful tea store in town (Tea Source) with helpful, respectful staff that seem happy to work there and are passionate about great tea. Best of all, their prices are far lower than Teavana’s.