Teavana

I fell in love with Teavana when I lived in Des Moines, IA, but had no clue it was a chain until I moved here and they put a store in the mall. You can imagine my amazement.
I’ve come here several times since they’ve opened, spent way too much money, and dealt with a lot of different employees. Depending on who you «get» will dictate what experience you have.
Most of the employees are pushy, however that is their job and they are taught to be that way. They «lure» you in with free samples and then try to sell you tea. Rather common sales tactic if you ask me. The tea samples are typically fresh and brewed on the strong side. Mary is correct they use german sugar, however, using raw sugar or even brown sugar yields almost the same taste. I too have had a similar conversation with an employee who was so snobby… well we won’t go there. There is one lady who takes her job WAY too seriously, and I try to avoid the place if I see her working. Overall, they tend to be kind and are more than willing to explain everything tea related to you, and give you free smells.
Price wise, yes, they are more expensive, but loose tea tends to last a lot longer. Oh and tea doesn’t go bad as fast as they make you think it will. I still am brewing tea I bought online from them like 3 years ago, fresh as the day I got it. (it was discontinued and I bought like 4 pounds… sue me haha!)
I try to stop by 4 – 5 times a year and look for new teas. They also have a decent return policy if you don’t like the tea, so make sure you keep the receipt. Oh and one more thing, since they got bought out by Starbucks, make sure you use a Starbucks gift card, you can earn stars towards gold membership!

I have been here twice and did not have any problems. I came in with my three kids and husband and everyone that worked here both times were polite and helpful and nice. We only ended up buying some drinks to go and thoroughly enjoyed them. Their stuff is a little pricey, but i will say that i have always loved their tea, and i am not a tea drinker.

I have been to this Teavana twice and I will never go back. The first time we were there, it was annoying but not bad. The second time was an awful experience.
What drew me into the store was drinking one of the iced tea samples they had. It was extremely delicious and actually kind of tasted like juice. So my partner and I went in and were looking around. The lady who was talking to us was actually really nice and not overtly pushy. Our Iced tea maker was on the fritz and we were looking at getting something to replace it. They had one we were interested in, but it was kind of small. The saleswoman told us to come back the next week because they were actually getting one in that was the same but a lot bigger. In the meantime, I stupidly dropped 20 dollars to get the teas that were in the sample I mentioned earlier.
I followed the directions given to me to a T and couldn’t get it to taste anywhere NEAR the sample tea. It was extremely frustrating and a complete waste of 20 dollars. As it turns out Teavana uses this German rock sweetener in all of their samples. Of course, this was not mentioned to me when I bought the tea initially.
I went in exactly one week later to look at the larger tea-​maker. The lady who had previously helped us was not there. We were once again greeted and then the high pressure sales pitch started. The young woman who was helping us kept asking us have you tried this tea? Have you smelled this tea? It got annoying fast. My partner was looking at the cast iron tea sets because he thought they were cool but we were not in the market to drop 80 dollars on one. (Tip: They have the exact same cast iron tea sets they are selling for 70 to 80 dollars on Amazon for 20 to 30 dollars) The young woman tried to convince us to buy one basically telling us that our tea wouldn’t taste as good if it wasn’t made in the cast iron teapot… give me break! I was able to sneak away from the woman to actually look at something I was interested in and a young man came up and tried to get me to buy a travel tea-​set. He kept telling me it was «good for long commutes» It takes what 20 minutes to get from West Omaha to downtown? Please that’s hardly a «long commute» We live in Omaha, not Los Angeles. Also, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to hassle with trying to brew tea WHILE driving. I don’t remember but I think the set was 20 dollars, which is kind of expensive given how small everything in the set was.
My partner and I decided to pass on the larger tea-​maker but we decided to buy some plain old Earl Grey. We told the young woman this and she looked annoyed and said «While we do carry only the top 5% best teas in the world, the Earl Grey is the lowest quality one we sell. Don’t you want a better tea?» No, we don’t. Considering the Earl Grey is $ 3.80 per 2 ounces. She then pulled out the bin for another black tea that was $ 18.00 per 2 ounces and told us to smell that one. We shut her down again and told her that we just wanted 6 ounces of the Earl Grey. She then went into a sales pitch about how the tea would go bad in a week if we didn’t buy their $ 7 dollar airtight canister. That is just a blatant lie. Tea doesn’t go «bad», it just loses its flavor. Second, the tea was obviously not made in America which meant that it probably spent a least a month on a ship to the US, so by her logic it should have already been «bad». The tea won’t lose its flavor in a week or even a couple months down the line. It is a good idea to store the tea in an airtight container to keep it from losing flavor if you intend to store it for longer than 4 or 5 months. It’s just the idea that the company would use a scare tactic such as «your tea will go bad if you don’t buy this product from us» is extremely off-​putting considering it’s not entirely true.
The lady then started to measure the tea. She said «I poured 10 ounces is that okay?» Uh. NO. Considering that would be an extra $ 7.60 and I told her specifically 6 ounces. Now, before my second visit I did a bit of research on Teavana and found out that they purposely over pour the tea when measuring it to drive up the cost of the purchase. From what I understand the employees have to get a certain total amount per transaction — which explains why they are so pushy and manipulative.
I will say that after drinking their Earl Grey tea, I could never go back to drinking something like Lipton. The quality of the teas is very good. With all that said, it’s not worth the hassle of the high pressure sales environment for some freaking tea! There are a lot of great other places in the Omaha area who sell quality tea without the naggy sales pitch.
Edit: Check out the filtered reviews. See Zach P’s review that was left shortly after I left this review a couple of years ago. LOL, totally an employee or management.