Whole leaf, Whole Life
The year Ku Cha House of Tea opened its doors, President George W. Bush began his second term, Hurricane Katrina crippled New Orleans and YouTube got its start.
Now, 20+ years later, much is different, including Ku Cha House of Tea. Our Boulder location changed - four times. We opened a shop in downtown Fort Collins. In 2021, we brought Ku Cha to Downtown Denver; and in 2022, we opened a store in Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree. Now, we are carrying 250+ teas and herbs, and culturally significant teaware and utensils. We are the largest specialty tea retail shop in the Colorado. Rooted in 3000 years of tea culture from China, the hometown of worldly teas, we are celebrating 20 years of business in 2025 since we opened our door to public in 2005.
We Champion Bitter, Because Without It There's No Sweet
Like most journeys, opening and running a retail shop introduced a parade of pleasures, pains, challenges, triumphs and defeats. The experience tracks our life's philosophy, which our very name honors. In Chinese, "ku" means bitter and "cha" means tea. Why did we include the word "bitter" in our store name? Do we sell bitter tea?
We believe that only after enduring through bitter - business complications, personal struggles, and so on - does sweet achieve its full glory. Without bitter, we think sweet offers just a shadow of its power. In most cases, the sweet never even emerges.
In other words, sweet takes work. We appreciate this. Like you, we work awfully hard. And when all of that toil produces something heart-stirring and pleasing, we do not forget to embrace it, to treasure it. Doing so honors all of those difficult investments of time, money and mental energy that nurtured the flowering of the sweet.
Twenty Years of Hard Work, With Sprinklings of Bitter + Sweet
Today we find healthy dollops of sweet when we consider the journey behind us. Twenty years of moves, of forging strong partnerships with tea farmers around the world, of understanding what consumers desire in tea and of educating guests about tea's myriad mysteries and joys.
When we contemplate the journey ahead - well, we know it involves plenty of bitter! That's life, and that's also owning and managing retail shops. But we hope that in another 20 years, when we celebrate 40 years of business, we once again look back and smile at the sweet stuff.
