Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Cassady.
Hi Emily, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I wish my story started out with something more than wanting to lose weight, but here we are. I was on the keto diet, and I was just looking for something other than vegetables and protein, so I turned to tea… because it can pack a flavor wallop with zero calories. In that search, I thought… let me just see if I can figure out how to make the perfect cup. That turned into pulling on a string that lead to the World Tea Academy out of New York City. I thought I would take one class and be an expert. Well, that one class turned into a Certified Tea Specialist designation, which turned into a Certified Tea Health Expert Designation, which turned into a Certified Tea Professional designation, which evolved into my Tea Sommelier certificate. Now, do I know everything about tea? Still no. But I feel solid about what I do know… and I can now make that perfect cup of tea. Then the bigger question came up – what do I do with this certification? I have a master’s degree in library science, and I taught school for almost ten years, so I imagined that I could dovetail the two and give out some free information while serving tea. Our school auction was looking for donations, so I offered a tea party in my backyard. This was 2019. And guess who called me up? Roshi Muns of Society Bakery. My family had been enjoying Roshi’s baked goods for a long while, so when she called, I imagined that she just wanted me to consult on a tea menu for her bakery. Turns out, she wanted a partner and she wanted to start a new venture. Turns out that I wanted that too, so we struck up a partnership, one that was quickly felled by Covid. However, we had a plan, and we did a, dare I use the word, pivot. People were so hungry for experiences and things they could do together but apart or do outside. We packed up our afternoon tea idea into cute to-go packaging, and it was decently successful. When it was appropriate, we started hosting patrons in the bakery, but the space wasn’t quite big enough for our dreams. Most recently, we moved our venture over to 1926 Skillman where you can now enjoy Afternoon Tea in our gorgeous tearoom. It is all of our English-inspired dreams come true!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My road to tea sommelier was a smooth sailing. As a librarian and someone who likes learning, that part was a dream. Over the course of my certification journey, I tried hundreds of different cups of tea from all parts of the world. I learned what I liked and what I didn’t like. For example, before I started my tea journey, green tea absolutely was not for me. Tasted like barnyard hay. Hard pass…but the health benefits are out of this world. I wanted to like it. If you add a lemon to that tea, it totally changes that cup into something magnificent. I know some people will say that green tea is just perfect the way it is, and that is also what is nice about tea. It is all to your own personal liking. So, while I know how to make you the perfect cup of green tea and I have sourced the green tea that pleases me, I know that we all come to that cup of tea from a different place. That was the real takeaway.
The road to getting our Skillman space open was a journey. Can you put quotes around that? Italicize it? a “journey”… when we started out planning our idea, we were walloped by a once in a lifetime (knock on wood) pandemic. But we figured it out, and we figured out that we had something Dallas was interested in. From there, we just kept working towards the big pictures. It took a minute to get here, but I could not be happier with the way things have turned out.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Society Bakery & Tea Room?
Society Bakery & Tea Room rolled out a soft opening in December 2023. It was a quiet opening, and it has steadily grown since we unlocked our specially made, English-inspired green front doors. We had a vision from the start of a place that Dallas would come and enjoy lunch or a special event, but our main focus is Afternoon Tea. Tea is a ritual, and we wanted to create an environment that allowed for the beauty and the calm that we hope surrounds your experience. When you hold a cup of tea in your hand, and you breathe it in, your body can’t help but have a reset. Your shoulders drop, your senses take it all in. The warmth in the cup offers you something different than other dining experiences. With tea, you linger with your table mates, you have genuine conversation, and you take a minute from how busy our lives are to really be in the moment. At least, that is what Roshi and I wish for you. In addition to that, we want you to enjoy our menu. Everything we do, we make from scratch. It is pairing her twenty years of successfully running a bakery, our research and planning, and my tea knowledge that we hope will set us apart. We want to be your neighborhood place to host a baby shower, an engagement party, a 9-year birthday party. We want to host you for our holiday menus, our Christmas teas. We want to become a part of your traditions, a place that you can’t wait to return to. Society Bakery and Tea Room offers a full lunch menu as well, which includes soups, salads, and sandwiches, as well as wine and champagne. Full service.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Our business started out with a grand plan, was derailed by covid, was re-imagined, and it has come out better than we ever could have hoped. What we saw during COVID-19 was that people really longed to be together and wanted experiences. Then research came out about how lonely people were and what a detriment that was to health and well-being, reaffirming what we had seen in person. Our dream was that we would provide a beautiful space where people could gather and have those moments again – and I think we got there with this concept.
Pricing:
- Beverages $3.50+
- Bakery items $3.75+
- Soups & Salads $10+
- Sandwiches $11+
- Afternoon Tea Experience $65
Contact Info:
- Website: societybakerytea.com
- Instagram: Societybakerytea
- Facebook: Society Bakery and Tea Room
- Other: https://resy.com/cities/dfw/society-bakery-and-tearoom?date=2024-01-18&seats=2
Image Credits
Jenny Watts Photography
