Tealuxe latest Harvard Square business to shut

Food. Lobby of the Smith Center (Holyoke Center) South side of Massachusetts Avenue between Holyoke Street and Dunster St. across from Harvard Yard
https://commonspaces.harvard.edu/smith-campus-center/food

I love their teas! This is terrible....

Would make a great spot for an ATM!

Their teas were pretty good (especially the peppermint iced tea on a sweltering day), but the place was often cramped, and if you wanted a quick tea and the person ahead of you was an aficionado, you were better off going to Peet's or Starbucks because the aficionado would take their sweet time to decide, thus slowing down service.

That loud scream you heard was me falling to my knees screaming into the heavens...

I worked above Tealuxe for 7 years and for 6 and a half of those years it was my retreat. My morning stop before getting on with my day. It is where I learned to drink tea, that Lipton was not representative of iced tea and that tea did not have to taste like dish water.

The staff was always amazing and knew exactly how I liked my tea... I became such a regular to the point where when I won my local election in Chelsea to City Council they renamed my favorite iced tea for the day to Councillor Franks Golden Monkey Iced Tea (It was normally just Golden Monkey) and put it on rotation for the week and gave me the card afterwards.

My eighth year in Harvard Square was with a private company and I would go out of my way to continue stopping in even though I had to go past about 5 Starbucks and 4 Dunks etc. My Tealuxe was so well known among my young staff that when I left that position they bought me a $50 gift card just to entice me to come visit, knowing it would work.

People who didn't know me would show up in the office with a Cupcake from Sweet when they wanted a favor... those who knew me would show up with an afternoon unsweetened iced tea lol.

I guess times , they have to change, and I have not been there for several years but it always felt nice knowing it was there.

If not now then in 20 to 30 years from now sociology classes will explain this as the creation of a national retail system. It's already here of course.

There are still local businesses but the infrastructure and dynamics on the back end favor chains. It also seems that most folks now see shopping at large scale, but low price businesses, is better than shopping at higher priced but local businesses. The social benefits of local benefits are not understood; the benefit of relationships with locally owned, locally focused retailers are no longer considered valuable.

The commercial element of small town life is dying. Walmart tolled the death knell. The pressures that convert lower end of the middle class to an upper level of poor aggravates the situation. As the middle portion of the middle class feels the economic pressure they will also join the upper level of the poor and so will also need to resort to the lowest price possible.

Perhaps these economic shifts are necessary in a world where the vast majority of objects are touched in a variety of nations. Therefore competition can no longer operate most efficiently at the level of local businesses. Instead there has to be a dominance of national businesses.

Boston Public Market is bet that local can survive. Hopefully the local businesses can. They will need to be sure that all staff are customer friendly (the wine store needs some help in that respect).

Anyone who can afford to shop at local businesses improves the local economy. But how much can the local economy compete against a national economy?