Tea-lovers Unite at HoiTea ToiTea

Writer  /  Stephanie Duncan
Photographer  /  Michael Thierwechter

Don’t miss the new shop that is bringing the tea experience to everyone — HoiTea ToiTea. Located on the corner of Broad Ripple Ave and College Ave, HoiTea ToiTea is a fun place for tea, with tons of seating space, a variety of adorable tea-related retail gifts and fun novelty British phone booths.

Alex Harris, the owner of HoiTea ToiTea, developed and appreciation for tea as a child when she would drink tea with her grandmother.

“It became a cultural thing where I always wanted to share it with my friends,” she says. “I would be 13 and making tea for my friends.”

Harris’s love for tea hasn’t seemed to waver and also owns, along with her husband, a wholesale loose leaf tea company, Nelson’s Tea. The idea to open a business came about from Harris’s tea drinking.

“My husband would say, ‘You’re drinking an absurd amount of tea, we should see if we can get wholesale prices,” Harris says.

They opened Nelson’s tea as a wholesale business in 2012, and Harris was able to make tea her full-time passion in 2016.

“I had been to plenty of tea expos and it was really proper and there were all these rules and it was very exclusive,” Harris says. “So, we’re trying break the barriers in the tea industry and make it accessible, affordable and fun, and show people that it’s not intimidating.

“We have had the vision for awhile for people to create their own tea blends, and so that’s how Nelson’s tea came about and then inspired us opening HoiTea ToiTea and the custom blending concept,” Harris adds.

HoiTea ToiTea serves up a wide menu of tea blends, as well as serving other local coffee and food items. It has plenty of meeting space but a higher quality food and service. They also have a private room equipped with a white board for meetings and private events.

Along with the café, HoiTea ToiTea offers tea-blending classes where people are guided in making a custom tea blend, then are set free to create their own custom blend. Their custom tea blend can be submitted for a chance to be featured on the menu for 30 days.

If you haven’t given tea a chance, Harris recommends giving HoiTea ToiTea a try. As for her favorite tea, that changes all the time.

“One of the more interesting blends was something I made around Christmastime last year, it’s a green and red rooibos with chocolate chips and orange flavoring,” she says. “I call it the Orange chocolate truffle. We made it into a latte, and people really seem to love it.”