Growing a Tea Meetup

One of our guiding principles here at Talking Tea is that conversations about tea and tea culture have the power to deepen our understanding and enhance our experience of tea. Today on Talking Tea we're exploring one of the ways people are increasingly coming together to share and talk about tea: tea meetup groups. We're joined by Roy Lamberty, founder and organizer of the New York Tea Society, a popular tea meetup in New York City. Roy tells us a bit about his own tea journey, how and why he came to organize the New York Tea Society, and how the group has grown and evolved since its inception. We talk about the challenges of running a tea meetup group and discuss choice of venue, theme and other important considerations in planning a successful meetup. But we also chat about the bonds that are formed through sharing tea, the value of learning from each other and the appeal of the meetup format to tea drinkers of all levels of experience. Aside from his role as meetup organizer, Roy Lamberty is the owner of myteaguy.com, an online seller of tea and teaware. For more info or to join the New York Tea Society, go to its Meetup.com site.  The New York Tea Society was featured in this New York Times article on September 26, 2017.  The Facebook group New York City Gong Fu Cha, mentioned in the episode, can be found here.    Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen. You can follow Ken on Twitter @kensvoiceken.    more about Talking Tea  Sign up for our email list to get updates on new episodes and events.   The views and opinions expressed by guests on Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its staff.   This podcast features music from "Japanese Flowers" (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers) by mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii) available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from original. Photo of a New York Tea Society meetup courtesy of Roy Lamberty. Header image "Raw Puerh mid 1980 Menghai" by Cosmin Dordea, used under a Creative Commons CC By-SA 2.0 license. Adapted from original.