Amy Dubin was determined to travel to India to immerse herself in the world of tea. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with the information she learned on her trip—she just knew she wanted to go.

It was shortly after September 11, 2001, and as Dubin says, “A lot of people at that time were reassessing their jobs and their purposes in life.” Dubin was one of those people. She sold her car, cashed out her 401(k) and boarded a plane for India, where she would spend six months learning the ins and outs of tea.

In March 2005—more than three years after heading east—Dubin unveiled the fruits of her efforts by opening Janam Indian Tea Shop in Jersey City, N.J.

THE TRIP

Dubin’s journey to India spawned from her vast interest in Indian tea. She researched tea-growing information for various countries, interviewed a tea taster and even struck up a friendship with Kumar Sanjay Krishna, who was the chair of the Tea Board of India. But even with those inquiries, she still wasn’t satisfied, so she decided to quit her video editing job and journey to India. “I’m just culturally curious,” she says. “I couldn’t find enough information here in the States.”

Krishna offered Dubin encouragement, advice and a couple of contacts to help her get started. About a week after arriving in India, she was invited to a wedding in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, where she was one of about 500 guests. Immediately, people reached out to her and offered to help her. “People were so nice to me,” she says. “They were like, ‘What are you doing here? What is this little, tiny, 95-pound white girl doing over here by herself?’ But they were very generous to me and really kind, and spent a lot of time talking to me, and invited me out to their gardens,” she says.

From there, she saw tea gardens and blending facilities all over the country. She spent time in areas such as Chennai, Ooty, Kerala and Darjeeling. She spoke to tea professionals about the manufacturing process and compared the methods used in different areas and regions.

One of the most important experiences on Dubin’s trip came in the first month she was there. She was visiting the agricultural college in Jorhat on a very hot day and toured the research fields. She decided then that she never wanted to own a garden, and that instead she wanted her own shop.

“It was that day at that place that all these thoughts converged into one and I was like, ‘Wow, if I had my own store then I could really decide what direction my life could go, and I could teach, and I could run my own business, and I could travel for tea,’” she says. “I realized that I could have all of those things if I just opened my own store and established credibility and be able to move forward from there.”

THE SHOP

When she returned to the United States, Dubin immediately started focusing on bringing the teashop to life. She visited teashops around New York and New Jersey to see what else was going on in her market. She wanted the Indian influence to have a strong presence in her store, but she also wanted to add her own twist on the theme. “I think that in America, and at least my market, we’re capable of establishing our own tea culture that can take cues from other people but that is uniquely and distinctly our own,” she says.

She was living in Jersey City before the trip to India, so she decided to remain in Jersey City and build the shop in a small space (700 square feet). She wanted a shop that would help build “a cohesive artist community of culturally interesting things to do,” she says. “I’ve watched the neighborhood grow over the last couple of years, I know full well, of course, there’s not a teashop anywhere that’s kind of doing what I want to do in this area. I saw that and I recognized that. The idea of community is very important to me.”

When it was time to name her teashop, Dubin chose a name that has a few definitions: Janam means birth; beloved; and the point on a tea plant where tea shoots originate. Dubin says the last definition is the most important to her because it’s a technical term, and she wanted the name of her shop to emphasize her dedication to tea. However, she also likes that the name is unusual in the town of Jersey City and that it attracts attention. “It’s a really specific name—kind of exotic-sounding,” she says. “People come in and go, ‘What is that? What is that name? Where does it come from?’ It sort of incites questioning. And so I really love not only what it means and its connotations, but what it does, how it turns into … kinetic energy.”

As for actually building her teashop, Dubin took inspiration from her trip and tried to build as much of her store from hand as possible. “Everything in that store is homemade, and I built the lion’s share of it,” she says. “I planned it all out … ergonomics and ease of
ovement and traffic flow relative to the windows. I tried to take as many things into account as possible, and then I just built it.”

Among the design choices she made for the store were a hand-painted mural, a tin ceiling, a bathroom roof made up of planks of wood, and fabrics that include plush and corduroy. Dubin also designed all the furniture, including the couches and a bench.

Something else Dubin incorporated at Janam was the color orange, which abounds from every corner of the store. “It originally was going to be a rust color, and it just felt too kind of dreary to me,” she says. “I thought that colors like these would just really jump out, that people would be attracted to them. The winters are very long here. So the colors are of course very saturated and alluring.”

Dubin says the colors she saw in India inspired her when choosing colors for her store. “I’m not afraid of color,” she says. “Indians are not afraid of color. Being over there, things just seem so much brighter and vibrant. It could be totally dusty … and there’s two people walking down the street both in bright orange saris, bright purple. And it just feels so
enlivening.”

When it comes to tea, Dubin has relied on contacts she made in India to provide Janam with some of its tea. She says her acquaintances there who have tea farms send her small amounts of fresh, high-quality tea. She also has arrangements with two exporters who send her tea directly from their gardens. But she says that may change after the store is around for a while. “As we grow, I’ll come up with new and different and better ways of getting fresh tea over here,” she says.

One thing Dubin created in New Jersey instead of getting it from India is her Masala Chai, which is Janam’s signature drink. After experimenting for about two weeks, going through about 15 gallons of milk and having her bridge group serve as taste testers, Dubin arrived at her blend.

“I designed it to be really drinkable,” she says. “Americans aren’t used to so much spice, and I found that when I was over in India, I had a lot of great chai experiences, but most of them were so spicy, I just couldn’t stand it. With this one, you can taste all the spices, but it’s not too spicy, which is good for a lot of people.”

In addition to tea and chai, Janam also has a variety of tea accessories: teapots, strainers and a variety of baking mixes. “Everything we have is all natural, everything we have is vegetarian, and very often things are organic,” Dubin says.

Janam also offers gift baskets, each containing tea and some accessories, as well as a clever name. A few titles include “Red, White and Don’t Be Blue,” “David Bowie’s Dream” and “Thanks for the Condiment!”

Dubin says that through everything she puts into the store, she wants customers to have a warm and comfortable experience when they come in. “When you go into my place, I want it to feel like you’re in your own living room,” she says, “that it’s not really a store, that you can be comfortable enough to be yourself.”

She involves the community by hosting game nights, showing movies, holding drawing sessions with live models, having a book club and hosting a knitting group. “The shop has really developed into a community cornerstone,” she says. “It’s almost like ‘Cheers’ in a way.”

And to keep that cornerstone functioning, Dubin spends almost all of her time at Janam. The shop has a couple of part-time employees, but Dubin covers the rest. She opens the store at 6:45 each morning and comes home around 11 each night. “I’m very, very committed to it,” she says. “Are you going to leave your three-month-old alone with a teenager for a week? No, so neither am I.”

In addition to her duties at the store, she also is planning another trip to India to renew her contacts there. This time, she plans on bringing some friends with her so they can share the experience. Dubin says the store is her way of paying tribute to the great people she met in India. “The atmosphere in the store and the way it feels in the store is something that I feel like personally I have to give people because that’s what people in India showed me.”

Chris Ryan is associate editor of Fresh Cup. Comments on this article may be sent to comments@freshcup.com.