Main Street Mavericks Business Spotlight: Lovejoy’s Tea Room

Lovejoy’s Tea Room in Ashland is a quiet and charming space full of delicious smells, quaint china, and friendly faces. Merchant Maverick was not only greeted well for our interview with owner Muna Nash but offered an afternoon tea service while we asked questions — an offer we couldn’t (and wouldn’t) refuse.

This tea room is an off-shoot of the famous San Fransisco location of the same name — which was Muna’s small business many years ago with her best friend. She decided to take a chance and open Ashland’s tea room right before the COVID pandemic created havoc and closed doors for small businesses across the world. But despite the rough start, Muna is positive and joyful.

This stop on our Main Street Maverick adventure was easily a favorite — from the company to the amazing tea sandwiches and chocolate selection, we left with full hearts and full stomachs.

Come meet Muna and learn more about Lovejoy’s Tea Room.

Q&A With Lovejoy’s Tea Room:

Tell us about yourself and your small business.

My name is Muna Nash, and I’m the owner of Lovejoy’s Tea Room in Ashland. I’m here at 96 North Main Street, number 201, just a little bit away from Lithia Park, which is the central point of Ashland, Oregon.

We’re an English-style tearoom, and we serve what’s called afternoon tea service, which means little sandwiches with the crust cut off; we serve wonderful English-style scones with clotted cream and preserves, toasted crumpets with lemon curds, sweets, of course, lots of tea choices.

And we have a room in the back called the parlor. And the parlor is where you would book a full afternoon tea service. You want to allow about two hours for that. It’s a very leisurely, very traditional style tea time. And then up front, where we’re all sitting right now, is a little more casual. You can just pop in and have some crumpets and tea or salad or soup and just hang out for a bit.

Tell us about your favorite thing about this business.

Definitely the people that come in.

I’ve worked many years in the restaurant industry, and I’ve run tea rooms for the last 25. And this is a very niche kind of business. Predominantly, women come in, but a few good men also join us for tea time.

But it’s a very homey and nurturing vibe that we present, and then we get that feeling back from our customers. It’s just a really special place to work.

Tell us your proudest moment about owning your own business.

My best friend from college and I opened up our first tea room 25 years ago. And I’d say our proudest moment was doing that. We did lots of different things. She was a stage manager, and I was living in Ireland. And we heard about this little tea room for sale in San Francisco. And we decided to just try it as a lark. And it ended up growing into a very successful business in San Francisco. It’s the oldest tea room in San Francisco.

And we sold that location about nine years ago.

But probably the proudest moment was when we realized we had pulled it off and that we were now business owners. We had no idea what we were doing, but we were somehow doing it, and sometimes, we would just look at each other and start giggling like, I can’t believe we’re doing this.

What’s one challenge you’re facing, and how can the community help?

COVID was a huge challenge for most small businesses. And I had been dreaming of coming to Ashland for many years. And in 2020, in January, I said to myself, I better just do it because if I don’t do it, I’m not going to do it. And this is on my bucket list. So I signed my five-year lease, and one month later, COVID hit.

COVID shut everything down. That was a very big challenge to me because I had a plan in place, and I’ve opened up five tea rooms, and they’ve all been super successful. And I was suddenly facing the reality that I had signed a five-year lease, and I couldn’t get out of the lease.

I was close to 60, and this was really bad. This little town is a tourist town. So, on top of it, of course, tourism just came to a halt, and then the fires stopped everything. So, those have all been challenges not only to myself but also to most of the small businesses here in Ashland.

I will say that this year, there’s a real sense of hope. The tourists are back. It’s been our busiest summer. My five-year lease ends in February of next year, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that maybe this year might be the year that we’ll turn it around and I can keep the business going.

The way that the community can help me is by supporting my business. I do rely on tourism, but I love it when locals come in, and there’s a lot you can do here, such as celebrate baby showers, birthday parties, and bridal showers. If the community enjoys having this style of restaurant here in town, then I’d love them to patronize it.

What is your top piece of advice for small business owners just starting out?

The reality is when you own a small business, it’s all up to you. If staff doesn’t show up, you’ve got to do four jobs; if the dishwasher doesn’t come, you put on those gloves and do the dishwashing. My motto ever since we started our first business was to learn every aspect of your business so that, if needed, you could do it without a team. It’s really important to have a great team, and I’m lucky because I do.

But you have to know every detail about your business so that if somebody doesn’t come or you can’t fill that position, you can jump into it. And you also need to be prepared to feel like this is your child or you’ve now taken on a new family member that needs constant attention.

When my best friend, as I mentioned, and I first opened up our business, we had a lot of growing pains, and we had never fought in our lives. Now we were like at each other’s throats. So we had to get counseling, like couples counseling, for our business. And one of the nice things that the therapist said is you have a colicky baby right now; you’re three years into your business.

You’re at that awkward place where the money is not coming in yet, but there’s hope. You have a colicky baby, and you’re both tired. So when we thought of it that way, we relaxed into: this is just hard right now, and we’ll get through it.

What’s the best part of being a small business owner?

I can control every aspect of this. If I want to do this, then I’m going to do it, and if it doesn’t go over well, it’s my fault, but I’m okay with it because I made that decision. I like having control over decisions rather than somebody telling me how to do things.

And I think everyone has different temperaments. You have to be a risk taker if you’re a small business owner, and that’s not the case for everyone. I do take risks. This was the first time that a risk didn’t pay off. So, it was a great learning experience for me to realize that it doesn’t always go the way you want it to. But I do like having the power to make the decisions.