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Date: 8/7/2019
WEST SPRINGFIELD – A unique West Springfield business, Crepes Tea House, is expanding their reach with the opening of another location, this time in Southwick.
According to the Crepes Tea House website, the first and original location in West Springfield opened on Feb. 19, 2010 after about 10 months of planning and working. However, co-owner of the business, Arturas Ribinskas, said the idea for the restaurant began a year earlier in 2009.
After some research, he found that creperies, which have done very well in places like Eastern Europe and Asia, simply had not been a huge success in America. So Ribinskas set out to bring something to the area that they didn’t already have, crepes and a selection of 100 different teas.
In the years since opening, the Tea House has expanded their business in several ways including a seasonal food truck in Springfield and Westfield, and opening locations at both the Holyoke and Enfield Mall, both of which have since closed.
The Holyoke Mall location, which operated for two years, recently closed in the beginning of July. Ribinskas told Reminder Publishing he didn’t renew the lease for many reasons including they didn’t feel like they could be that creative and different in the location.
However, the demand for Crepes Tea House food remained high. Calls from across the country poured into the restaurant, asking them to consider franchising and to open locations in states such as Washington, North Carolina, and Virginia. Despite calls from around the country, the restaurant noticed many of their customers came from Westfield, northern Connecticut, and towns from the surrounding areas.
In order to reach their customers, they wanted to open a location in the area they saw many of their customers coming from, so they chose Southwick. The building took one year and 10 months to purchase, Ribinskas said, and the paperwork was signed on June 24.
A little less than a month later the Southwick location opened on July 19 and Ribinskas said despite no advertising having been done, customers poured into the restaurant. In fact, the tea house was so busy during its opening weekend, they needed to buy a new, bigger grill to accommodate the business they experienced.
Ribinskas said opening weekend surpassed every expectation that had been set.
“We never expected it to be that busy,” he said. “Our projections were half of what they are now.”
Despite having the same menu, appealing to the same customers, and staying at the same price point, there are a couple of key differences in the locations.
The first is the 3.5 acres of land the Southwick location sits on. While Ribinskas isn’t 100 percent sure what the restaurant will do with the land, he said there have been several ideas such as outdoor seating and a place for people to bring their dogs. He said, however, he wants the community to share ideas with him.
“I want them to tell me what they want, what they need,” he said. “It’s all about them, not about us.”
The second key difference is the Crepes Tea House in Southwick will, eventually, serve alcohol. While there is no definitive timeline, the restaurant hopes to be serving a variety of European alcohol and liquors sometime in early fall when the process of transferring the liquor license is completed. Ribinskas said, at this time, there is no interest in bringing alcohol to the West Springfield location.
Despite booming business Ribinskas said at the moment, there are no future plans for additional locations.
“It’s a lot of work, and we don’t want to lose what we gained with quality,” he said.
Instead, he told Reminder Publishing, the restaurant will be concentrating on quality, efficiency, and working through the obstacles that come with opening a new location.