Two Wichita tea rooms to close

WICHITA — Like a number of restaurants, Wichita’s tea rooms are suffering due to the economy. Two are closing. A third was saved thanks to a rent reduction.

Riverside Cup of Tea’s last day in business is Saturday, and Aunt Hattie’s Tea Room at 1810 W. Douglas will close Dec. 30.

“Wichita’s not really supporting their tea rooms,” says Onalea Gerner Crile, who has owned Riverside Cup of Tea for four of its 12 years.

“We’re the most tucked away of all of the tea rooms,” she says of her location at 1617 Briggs, just south of the Castle Inn Riverside.

Almost a year ago, Crile told Have You Heard? she was looking to move. But she decided it was too expensive.

Part of the problem, Crile and others say, is customers look at tea rooms as places only for special occasions.

“If you have enough people come once a year, it’s OK,” says Pat Crumpton, who owns Aunt Hattie’s.

But she says that’s not the case.

“I don’t think most people even think about it — supporting independents,” Crumpton says. “It’s sad, but it’s time for me to move on and go see my grandkids.”

She’s moving to Salina to be with her three grandchildren.

“I gotta get up there before they get too old and don’t want nothin’ to do with me,” she says, laughing.

Sherry Underwood considered closing her Cup-In-Saucer at 4935 W. Central, but her landlord reduced her rent.

“So I get to stay,” she says.

Underwood says she’s tried to price her 3-year-old business economically so customers feel like they can “afford to come every day if they wanted to.”

As a diner herself, Underwood says she’s noticed restaurants starting to do better. She eats out only on the weekends, and last year at this time she says there was rarely a wait on Friday or Saturday nights.

That’s changed.

“You are having to start to wait in line for tables again.”

And that gives Underwood’s business some hope.

She says she’s been told that it “takes five years to build a clientele base that you can survive on.”

“I didn’t want to give up too soon.”

  • reader1999

    What IS a tea room? Maybe better marketing would help.

  • usaproud1234

    wikipedia definition

    A tea house or tearoom is a venue centered on drinking tea. Its function varies widely depending on the culture, and some cultures have a variety of distinct tea-centered houses or parlors that all qualify under the English language term “tea house” or “tea room.” In Central Asia this term could refer to Shayhana in Kazakh and Chayhona in Uzbek which literally means a tea room.

  • WichitaWordsmith

    Great… but in Wichita, Kansas, what is a tea room? What do ours offer? Would have been nice to have read that in the story.

  • http://www.delanowichita.com/ KarenInDelano

    WW: You menfolk wouldn’t be interested. Cute little china, dainty little sandwiches and soups and desserts, and (in the case of Cup-In-Saucer, at least) antiques and gift-shop things. Cup-in-Saucer is a nice little place to take my mom or mother-in-law, but I wouldn’t drag my husband there.

    I have a little difficulty with tea rooms, both because I’m just not ladylike enough in the first place and also because I was traumatized by the tea room (land?)lady who screamed F-bombs at the neighborhood cleanup crew some years back. Tea and cookies give me cognitive dissonance now.

  • redcoalcarpet

    Very sad! I have been to RCoT with my ladies (wife and daughter) before and they serve a very nice lunch in addition to tea!

  • juno2119

    I went to Aunt Hatties for a baby shower and was thrilled to see a table full of young ladies (4-7 years old) dressing up with boa’s, hats and gloves. They were adorable. I am planning on taking my granddaughters, and daughters just for the fun of it!! The deserts were delightful also!!!

  • Ksjeff

    Tea Rooms exist to serve the civilized.

    Wichita is more of a buffet, fast food, all-you-can graze type of city.

  • mkinn1

    Tea rooms are a little too “boughie or booghie”, (however you spell it), for me. I was forced to go to one of my mothers sorority gatherings at a tea room and sat there craving McDonalds.

  • alice75

    ksjeff – exactly – funny how the post after proved you right. The english/victorian styles we have here ARE too girly. In Boulder, CO there is a Dushanbe tea house – thank you usaproud for explaining – this one is in the Uzbek tradition. Not gender – related one way or the other. Fantastic. I too, don’t feel dainty enough to visit these. I also have sons, not daughters.

  • superabimus

    I wish I had known there were so many tea rooms in Wichita to start with. I love that type of thing. Although, I have to agree that I don’t need them to be so girlie all of the time.

  • RandomKR

    This is very sad news to me. I, like many of you, didn’t know what a tea room was until about 2 years ago when my mother in law and little sister in law took me to RCoT on my birthday. Over the years going there had become a birthday tradition to me. I am going to miss that cute little place.

  • james1313

    There are lots of tea “houses” in other cities that do fantastic-they are usually a little more modern though–Too bad, but I must say I had tried to go a few times to different ones and it seemed you had to make an appointment or come at a very specific time to eat.

  • podunkboy

    Well, it’s a shame that “tea” around these parts is iced and likely pre-sweetened, but outside of a tea room and maybe an old-school Chinese restaurant, who orders hot tea? And were I to set foot in one of those tea rooms, I would likely drown in a wave of rampant estrogen.
    My 10-year-old and a few of her classmates were taken to Aunt Hattie’s as a reward by one of their teachers, and they thought it was really special, although it was so expensive that they had to share desserts…teacher’s salary, don’t you know.

  • WichitaWordsmith

    Thanks, Karen. I suspected, but have never been to such a place and was curious.

  • teaforme

    Beautiful living is not just for special occasions. Tea time speaks of a different pace, a genteel space, a still moment, a quiet thought and a worthy conversation.

  • bth

    Good point teaforme. I definitely ain’t ‘genteel’ but I definitely enjoy a couple of cups of tea (caffein-free) at night to end the day. An attempt to terminate the insanity that goes on all day.

  • Wiseman

    “Wichita’s tea rooms are suffering due to the economy.”

    Due to the economy???
    More like due to lack of advertisement or word of mouth to a larger crowd.

    “Wichita’s not really supporting their tea rooms,” says Onalea Gerner Crile, who has owned Riverside Cup of Tea for four of its 12 years.

    Part of the problem, Crile and others say, is customers look at tea rooms as places only for special occasions.

    So why make a Tea Room cute, why not make it a cool place to go?
    You can teach the younger generation that drinking tea is a cool thing to do by a modern approach to an age old social activity.

    Onalea, you been tailoring to the wrong market.

  • http://www.delanowichita.com/ KarenInDelano

    Wiseman: Zoomdweebie’s tried that, and it hasn’t worked all that well for them either.

  • CF2K

    Just discovered today, while walking by, that RCoT had closed. What a shame! My wife and I visited three times in the last year, and brought out-of-town guests twice. The food was wonderful, and very reasonably priced considering its quality. Estrogen overload? You bet. But the beef sandwich was very good and the baked goods of very high quality.

    RCoT will be missed very much.