Meet the "Bry" in Bry and Tea

Whilst struggling to decide on a subject for this month's blog, I came up with the daft idea of introducing you to the newest member of the team - Phil (a machine not a human!) Whilst immediately deciding this was a completely boring idea, I realised I haven't ever actually introduced myself. So I am the subject of this month's blog - not the most exciting subject but now what feels like the longest January in history is over I'm feeling brave enough to put my face on the website. Those of you who know me from my market stall will know me as Bryony or Bry to my friends, but how many of you know why I started selling tea in the first place?

This is me, the "Bry" in Bry and Tea

I grew up in Skipton in a fairly large family, being the youngest of four. My parents had a

B&B and an outside catering company so I was brought up by two chef's and so we always had really good home cooked food - not posh (that was saved for the catering buffets) with four hungry children and running their own business you can imagine the budget my parents had to work with! We ate real food, we didn't ever have chicken nuggets and potato smilers. The same was true of the tea and coffee we drank - Mum always bought loose leaf tea - assam fannings to be exact - the very same assam fannings I sell today - from the same supplier and no doubt still from the same farm in India. I am honoured to now be able to supply my Mum with tea. Dad doesn't drink tea, but he was as fussy about his coffee as Mum is with her tea - he started with a cafetiere, moved up to a filter machine and then my parents went to Italy for the first time on holiday and he had his first espresso - now he has the latest bean to cup espresso machine and is extremely particular about his beans.

This love of fine tea and coffee was passed down to the next generation, when my older brother left home to go live in London he found fantastic loose leaf tea shops with all sorts of teas, green teas, black teas, tea blends - which he promptly sent home samples for me and my sister to taste. When visiting my brother in London the places we headed to always included tea shops - smelling all the different types of tea and blends - deciding which to take home.

One day I was trying to find a storage solution for all my teas - I wanted something a bit like a spice rack but for tea - I struggled to find anything that wasn't already full of spices so I decided to make my own with little kilner jars. Mum said "that's a fantastic idea - you could sell those". Fast forward a few months to August 2019 and I had my very own market stall - I also sold little packets of tea to refill the kilner jars. After my first year in business I came to the conclusion that nobody wanted to buy the tea displays - they simply wanted to buy tea and so from then on I focused on the tea, adding new ones and blending my own to sell. Later, I added quality coffee and luxury belgian hot chocolate to my stall and also got my very own website up and running so my market customers could still buy their favourites off me from anywhere in the country.

Football Coaching

I am very much into health and fitness - I play and coach football, play squash, go mountain biking, try to lift some tiny weights now and again, and my day to day job between markets and making tea and writing blogs is quite physical as I work in property repair and maintenance. When I was leaving school I wanted to join a college course in health and fitness but ended up going for an accountancy course (more practical and turns out extremely useful when running your own business 20 years later). After working 10 years in accounts practice and 12 years as an office manager I have been gradually returning to my original interests and now have an NVQ in sports anatomy and principles of exercise, my football coaching level 1 and my reading matter quite often includes anything about the human body and nutrition (specifically relating to the female body when I can find it) and I am part way through an online course on supporting women in exercise. I also eat as healthily as possible whilst still enjoying my food - I don't count calories I simply eat what I know is good for me 80% of the time and don't feel guilty about the other 20%.

Winter Spice Tea

This interest in health comes across into the teas I blend - I love researching the different ingredients that I can use to create teas that not only taste amazing but are really doing some good too. This is evident in the Detox Tea, Vitamin Tea, Sleepy Tea, Chai Tea, Winter Spice Tea and Arabian Nights. Also, the Berry. Berry Matcha and the Lemon and Lime Yerba Mate teas were both blended specifically for energy drinks whilst exercising. Watch this space - next month there should be some new teas starting to come through - I'm currently working on a stress busting tea to lower cortisol levels, a digestive tea to help sooth any tummy issues, a ladies tea for beating those PMT blues and also a menopause support tea, and no doubt many others to follow.

If you managed to get this far, well done! I hope you enjoyed getting to know me a little and finding out how the birth of Bry and Tea came about.