At the beginning of my month long stay in Santa Monica one of the first things I did was see what tea shops were close to where I was staying. I was super excited to see Bird Pick Tea and Herb was a short five minute walk from the apartment and was bouncing out the door and on my way within minutes of that discovery!
The store is located in an outdoor shopping area, tucked away in a back corner. I walked in and to the left was a tea bar where you could order drink with several tables to sit and relax at. On the right was all the loose and bagged tea. I was able to browse the tea selection on my own and could open the jars to smell them.
The two gals working there were polite, attentive and left me alone when I said I was still browsing. They checked in on me briefly a couple of times and when I was ready to choose, they were there to bag tea for me. They have no minimum on their bulk tea and even have small zipping pouches for sample sizes. After each tea was bagged, the gal showed me how much was in it and asked if that amount was okay. I never felt pressured to buy more and she was able to answer all of my questions.
They had a large selection of tea ware from matcha whisks, tea cups ranging from traditional to modern, tea kettles, thermoses, tins and infusers. The larger tins seemed fairly air tight, but the smaller were not which is too bad because they were cute! For teas, they had a lot of straight unflavored teas, only a few flavored. Half of it was black, some green, some herbal and some herbs on their own. Unfortunately for me, all the herbal mixes had hibiscus in them so I stayed clear of those. I saw some pu-ehr cakes the size of my hand, some prepackaged looseleaf gift packs and some bagged tea. Every month they do a special and this month is 20% off loose green teas which works for me! I think the only thing that was disappointing was that there wasn’t more blends of tea or much in the way of decaffeinated or rooibos. Other than that I really couldn’t ask for much more in a tea shop and it was a great first experience with the company! If I end up liking the teas, I’m bound to be back multiple times during this stay.
