About Us

Our story of tea began back years ago when Matt came home with a surprise anniversary gift. His idea was to get something that both of us could enjoy. Sure enough he stopped at a tea room! At that time, Matt didn’t know much about loose tea as he mainly drank coffee and Joyce never liked any other beverage besides water. After smelling different kinds of tea from taster jars along with a lot of help from the tea room owner Matt picked a few blends that had good appearance and smell. On that very night, we learned how to brew our first cup of loose tea. Little did we know that we would enjoy it so much and how it would guide the rest of our lives!

After a few years of us becoming tea drinkers, our favorite tea shop closed down, and we were left without a local source of loose tea. We were quite disappointed, but every cloud has a silver lining though, as we seized the opportunity to get into the tea business ourselves. It was around the time after Joyce took a few years off from her teaching job to raise our children. With the hesitation to leave the children behind, Joyce was only looking to do something part-time.  Online tea boutique satisfied that thought as the hours were entirely flexible and it could be done right from our home. As the business plan came together, the name “Short and Stout Tea” was quickly selected for “I’m a little teapot” being the song that we kept hearing our children sang over and over again while role playing a tea party.  

To us, tea is more than just a drink. We became fascinated with every aspects of it including the history and the art and science of brewing. As our knowledge grew, we began sharing our love of tea with others. Matt even started a tea club at his work. Soon tea had become an integral part of our lives that one could say we drink, breath and sleep tea. It indeed connects the dots and overlaps with many things that we enjoy doing such as traveling, cooking, learning new things, meeting new people, or simply just spending time with our friends and family. 

Having Short and Stout is like a dream come true for us as we are able to build on our original concept of making tea fun and accessible to everyone in Albany and beyond. The tea shop gives us the opportunity to interact one-on-one with our customers and share our knowledge of tea. It’s also Joyce’s experimental ground for new blends and unique drinks as well as Asian inspired pastry recipes. Short and Stout doesn’t feel like a job because we love what we are doing and like the old saying goes, “Do what you love and never work a day for the rest of your life.”

Cheers,

Joyce & Matt