Innovation

“We focus on supporting local businesses!” - Alli Jukiro, Owner

Dobra Tea Northampton is the seventh Dobra Tea room in the U.S, which is independently owned and operated by Alli and Joel Jukiro. Since opening in November of 2013, Dobra Tea Northampton has been doing an excellent job at sharing tea culture, offering varieties of teas of the highest quality, and supporting local farmers and food producers. This tea room is an eclectic mix of Bohemian, Moroccan, Middle Eastern and Asian aesthetic, providing a comfortable atmosphere to customers. According to The Valley Advocate, Dobra Tea Northampton was voted the Best Place for Tea for 2016.

They focus on providing high quality products and customer services. The majority of their teas are handmade in distant lands where the process has been mastered over the centuries. They also used handmade pottery or vessels to serve their teas. In order to provide the purest taste and bringing out their tea’s most delicate flavors, the drinking water they used is filtered. Aside from offering high quality teas, Dobra Tea Northampton also provides locally produced, chemical free food from local farmers, chefs, and bakers. During the summer months, 100% of their vegetables come from the local farms. During the winter months, they source their food as much as possible from local partners. Dobra Tea Northampton has dedicated itself to sharing tea culture, providing teas of the highest quality and supporting local businesses.

In addition, Dobra Tea Northampton embraces diversity. They not only offer tea classes focusing on tea and tea culture but also host live entertainment in the form of world musicians, speakers, belly dance, tea-themed movie nights, and so on. They welcome people of all walks of life, gender, belief systems and so on to join their community.

Inspiration

“We decided to build a tea business, because we love tea!”- Alli Jukiro owner

Alli and Joel joined the collective and opened their own Dobra Tea room in 2013. They began their relationship with Dobra Tea while attending college at the University of Vermont. After graduating from the college, they worked on a small community farm in Montana, where they came to profoundly comprehend the importance of local farms and community. After three years in Montana they spent three months traveling around the tea lands of China. This experience provided deep insight into the tea culture. They learned that tea is a way of life, which promotes long life and prosperity. Regularly drinking tea brings some benefits to people’s health, such as a lower risk for heart disease and diabetes. Aside from that, tea represents diverse cultures from different countries. This experience also inspired the original idea of launching a tea business to share their passion for tea and the positive value of tea culture.

After returning from China, Alli wanted to work for a tea company but she didn’t get the job she sought. One night, Alli and Joel had a passionate discussion about their future tea road. She couldn’t sleep after the discussion. Since they knew of Dobra Tea from before, they began searching for different websites for the different Dobra Tea rooms, which inspired Alli to apply for a position provided by Dobra Tea in Portland, Maine. Successfully, she got the job and moved across the country to join the “Devoteas”. Each Dobra Tea Room is independently owned and operated by highly trained "Devoteas", who maintain the very high standard of quality and service that each Tea Room requires. Alli and Joel spent two years learning about the art of tea and the tea business from the owners and employees of other tea rooms. After studying tea culture and business, they decided to move to Northampton, Massachusetts to start their own tea business.

Overall impact

Since opening in November of 2013, Dobra Tea Northampton has been playing a positive role in supporting local economy, community and environment. Dobra Tea Northampton not only cooperates with local businesses to motivate the local economy, but also shares a positive culture and core values with employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors to help develop a sustainable community. In addition, their business operations to some extent can help protect the environment. For example, they use reusable handmade pottery or vessels rather than using disposable containers to serve tea which can help to protect the environment from being polluted by garbage.

Business benefit

Dobra Tea Northampton is a small business that sources tea, items, ingredients and services from many local partners. So far, this tea room has cooperated with more than 30 local businesses. The impact of economic cooperation between Dobra Tea Northampton and the local suppliers creates a new way of competition to support their businesses’ positive development which directly enhances the local economy. Since Dobra Tea Northampton provides high quality food which directly relates to high sales, their business model of collaboration brings a positive impact on local businesses.

Alli Jukiro, one of the owners, said “We strive to develop more positive collaboration and more honesty in supporting community”. This reflects Dobra Tea Northampton’s business model and their long-term goals of seeking positive collaboration and sustainable development. For instance, Dobra Tea Northampton source at least 30% of herbal tea from one of their competitors-Acadia Herbals. They work together to provide high quality teas and learn from each others positive role of their businesses. Aside from that, Dobra Tea Northampton gets some of their bakers from Tart bakery to provide customers high quality food. Thus, when encountering competitors, the owners hold that they would like to seek a “win-win” strategy to cooperate with their competitors, learn from their competitors, and let their competitors understand the positive role of their business rather than just competing against each other. Besides pursuing the profits, the major goal of their business is to share their passion for tea, culture and local food with everyone.

Social and environmental benefit

The impact of Dobra Tea Northampton on society is that they use their business model as a way of sharing tea culture, offering healthy food, and motivating responsible consumption and production for the whole society.

In the first place, they have undertaken various efforts in order to share tea culture, including offering tea classes focusing on tea and tea culture, and hosting live entertainment in the form of world musicians, belly dancers, and tea-themed movie nights, etc. This can provide learning opportunities for employees, customers, and suppliers. In addition, their menu provides the story of each tea, including detailed information and photos to provide a bit of scenery and a deep insight of where the teas come from.

In addition to providing high quality teas they also focus on local healthy food. They source most of their teas directly from tea plantations in countries around the world where teas are harvested and processed by hand, which can ensure the high quality of teas. Since most tea plantations are in developing and underdeveloped countries, the demand of teas to some extend can improve the tea planters’ income. They offer locally produced and chemical free food from nearby farms, which maintains the high quality of food and supports the local community. Therefore, the business model of Dobra Tea Northampton offers good health to customers and supports a sustainable local community.

What’s more, this business model drives local partners to grow and produce chemical free food, which can motivate responsible social production. In return, Dobra Tea Northampton offers high quality food sourced from local farms to motivate responsible social consumption. For example, an increasing demand of high quality fruit can stimulate local suppliers to be responsible for producing chemical free and fresh fruit, such as apples and oranges. Customers can obtain healthy food from Dobra Tea Northampton, which in turn can influence customer’s consumption habit.

Environmentally, Dobra Tea Northampton’s business operations also bring positive impact. The increasing demand of local chemical free food can protect the environment from the pollution of waste, while the lower costs of transporting and storing local food can reduce the exhaust emissions and energy consumption. In addition, they use reusable handmade pottery or vessels rather than using disposable containers to serve tea, which can help to protect the environment from being polluted by garbage.

Interview

Alli Jukiro, Owner