During his travels as keyboardist for the local-gone-global rock band Foxy Shazam, Sky White got into fine teas after visiting many tea rooms around the world. The result was his own tea brand, Wendigo Tea, which he founded in 2014. This month, the “teapreneur” will see a decade of hard work come to fruition in the form of his first brick-and-mortar location in East Price Hill.
PHOTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY DUNE BAYDOUN
Set to open on Halloween, Wendigo Tea is part of the Warsaw Avenue Creative Campus, which includes The Empanada’s Box, Urbana Café, and Cutman Barbershop. “I’m kind of passionate about trying to make the West side more of a destination for people,” says White, who grew up in the area.
Named after the mythological cannibalistic monster, the tea brand started as his attempt at cultivating an audience around higher-end tastes, he explains.
“I wanted an entire company of the higher price point stuff and wanted to steer clear of the flavored teas and the cheaper things,” White notes. “That was the same business model I did with Foxy, where, you know what? The industry sucks, so let’s just make fans. And we did that by playing shows. I did the exact same thing [with teas]. Go make fans and try to have those fans appreciate what you do.”
While the storefront will have a retail space selling some of his signature teas—include Bigfoot Black Tea, Nessy Jasmine Tea, and FireBird Chai—White says he’s looking for a more nuanced experience in which he has conversations with tea lovers and tea curious people alike.
“I’m planning on every day at noon cracking into another tea that I’ve never tasted and experiencing that and talking through that with other people who are in there,” he says. “If I can get people who want to come in a few days a week and try something new after a couple of years of literally being handed a free sample of a cool, rare tea, they’ll eventually have a better understanding of a whole lot of different styles of tea and a whole lot of different regions. All of that just really adds up.”
Photograph courtesy of Wendigo Tea Co.
White used to work 200 events a year, including City Fleas and holiday markets. Until recently, he ran the business out of his home. With the opening of the tasting room, he wants to scale back the events but will still have his teas in restaurants, coffee shops, and sold on his website. In fact, Urbana Café will brew his cold and hot teas to go, but Wendigo’s 1,300 square-foot tasting room will not have to-go service. Instead, White will have long-form tastings and long conversations about the teas. And he will have an area of “behind-the-curtain” teas.
“Tea owners tend to always have their favorite tea, which is probably not even for sale to normal people,” he explains. “You have to talk to them and start getting them excited about a tea that changed their life and what it means to them. And there always tended to be that tea that person had behind a curtain.”
White admits he’s not a tea expert by any means, but it humbles him to talk to other tea experts, and he wants to share it with his customers.
“Everybody has their own intimate relationship with tea,” he says. “Some people need their hand held to that first step, and for some people it’s just not going to make sense or matter to. But there are a lot of people in which different kinds of tea could make their life more joyful, better, and healthier. It really just takes conversation to kind of figure out if a tea is likely to make your life better, and let’s talk to figure out what that is. Are you trying to get off of coffee because it’s making you anxious? Are you looking for herbal teas to help with one thing or another? Are you a person who needs green or white tea in your life, or L-theanine content to help you be a happier, healthier, more productive human? Or do you just want something fast and delicious?”
His job, as he sees it, is to guide tea drinkers to higher-end tea experiences and open up a new world for them. But building a tea experience is quite different from literally building a tasting room.
“I’m kind of taking a long time and trying to think of every piece of furniture and artwork,” he says. “How can I make this little area special? It’s kind of maddening because I’ve never done this before. The whole process is cool, but it’s a lot of things I’ve never had to tackle before, both as an individual and as a business owner.”
He’s been doing some of the projects himself, like making epoxy tables. He’s integrating kintsugi into the flooring, which is broken pottery fixed with gold to highlight the break. “I wanted the floor to look like it was broken and fixed and put back together,” he says. To emulate the woods, he’ll have monsters and live edge wood in the space so it feels natural.
White knows the new journey he’s embarking on is niche, and it’s different from being a coffee roaster. But because places like KungBrew have been successful, he realizes Cincinnati is ready for experiential tea culture.
“I want to have people maybe even bring their own stuff and have fun drinking there and talk about it amongst each other,” he says. “I don’t want it all revolving around my products. I want it to revolve around how do we all get better at tasting cool teas together and create a culture around that. I’m definitely taking a risk in trying to build the kind of home I want and my customers would want. I have faith in Cincinnati, and I have faith in our ability to bring a cool enough experience.”
Wendigo Tea, 3116 Warsaw Ave., East Price Hill
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