ELMWOOD INN FINE TEAS
135 N. 2nd Street • Danville, KY 40422
800-765-2139 • elmwoodinn.com
“Bruce and I always say that tea is not a commodity; it’s a lifestyle,” says Shelley Richardson, co-owner with her husband, Bruce, of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas. These days, the couple’s tea lifestyle centers around their tea shop and online tea business in Danville, Kentucky.
Longtime readers of TeaTime may
recall that the Richardsons once owned
a tearoom in Perr
yville known as the Elmwood Inn. (It was featured
in TeaTime’s premiere issue in 2003.) After enjoying afternoon tea there, guests would often ask where they could buy tea like what they had just been served. “In the early 1990s, I had to say, ‘You can’t. You can’t buy loose tea in America,’” Bruce recalls. The couple started bagging and selling loose-leaf teas at their tearoom, eventually creating their own Elmwood Inn brand. “We had to. There was such a demand for tea,” Bruce says.
The company is always evolving into something new, says Shelley. Their mail-order tea business grew so large they decided to close the tearoom in 2006 and open a shop dedicated to blending and selling fine teas. In 2012, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas moved to the sun-filled shop on Second Street, just a few blocks from Danville’s quaint town square.
Although Bruce and Shelley have owned a tea business for more than a quarter of a century, they haven’t abandoned their first careers—as teachers. “We’re still teaching. We do it in our shop every day,” Shelley says. Whether tea connoisseurs or newcomers to tea, customers who come into the shop will leave knowing just a little more about the genial beverage. Hundreds of students have attended the couple’s professional tea master classes, Tea 101 and Tea & Etiquette, since they began in 1999. “We teach what we know and how we live,” she says.
Elmwood Inn Fine Teas is evolving once again. “Our son, Ben, has joined us in our business,” Shelley points out. “He grew up with tea, and he’s the next generation of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas.”
