David's Tea, Good or Gimmick?

Hello everyone! So recently I discovered this really cool store called David's Tea that sells loose leaf tea. The store is beautiful! It's designed really well and is extremely eye catching! The turquoise and all the shiny tins drew me in...what is this magical place?

I stepped in with my friend Aileen (we were shopping at the mall and about to leave) and immediately a sales lady tells us she's making us some tea to try. She hands me a tea called Santa's Secret and Aileen gets Mulberry Magic. I sip it and think it tastes alright, I really love the minty feeling in my mouth and throat... it was like nothing I've ever tried before! Intrigued, I didn't know where to start in this store...and another sales lady (with the most awesome red hair ever) welcomes us and shows us the 5 teas she has on the counter that were from the Winter Collection. Aileen and I smell them and we were so amazed! Some of these teas smell like cake and candy! Others nutty, spicy and fresh! 

Curiosity piqued, I ask about the teas on the shelves arranged in neat rows with colored labels. Each color represents a type of tea such as rooibos and mate and they all have the coolest names! I mean, Countess of Seville, Fantasy Island, Brazillionaire! The names entice me even more! Somewhere in our olfactory explorations, Aileen and I mention we love sweet, candy like smells and our sales lady brings down Birthday Cake and Chocolate Rocket for us. OH MY LORD...there are sprinkles in Birthday Cake and Chocolate rocket smells like chocolate and bananas! This isn't tea! It's desert!

So...we were writhing in glee and wonder (and some confusion still)...upon seeing that we were such noobs, the sales lady asks us if this was our first time at David's Tea to which we said "....uhhh.....derr....yeah"

She gave us a free full sized cup of tea each (not the sample sizes we had earlier) just because we were new to the store and I thought: "Wow! What a nice lady!" It was more Santa's Secret's minty goodness which I thoroughly enjoyed.

After smelling about 30 different teas and loving nearly all of them! I ask for a recommendation that has a high caffeine content and is quite sweet. She says Chocolate Rocket is a pretty good choice but brings down two other teas from the shelves (which are looking pretty bare looking now since they're all on the counter being smelled). The one called Honey Bee smelled so sweet and amazing! After sniffing it I loudly proclaimed: " IT SMELLS LIKE LONDON!!" 

...not that I've ever been to London...but I wanna go...*off topic*

I buy 100 grams of Honey Bee since I'm obsessed with British accents and all their mannerisms (and because the tea smelled so delicious!) and I also get a small, 8 gram sample of Chocolate Rocket. 100 grams of tea gets you a free David's Tea tin, it's purdddyyy~ <3

Honey Bee Tea

Chocolate Rocket Tea

The perfect tin for keeping your tea dry and fresh!

I wish I knew our sales lady's name because she was such a sweetheart! If I know customer service, that was one of the best experiences shopping for anything that I've ever had! I left the store thinking I'd definitely come back!

...but now...I'm looking at things a little differently...

The one thing that bothers me the most about David's Tea is that it's SO overpriced! Sure you can steep the leaves a couple times to get 3 or 4 cups worth of tea but I can buy a box of 300 Orange Pekoe teabags at Costco for 10 bucks. That's a huge price difference from my 14 dollars for 108 grams of tea and 10 bucks for 300 tea bags. Is there a quality difference? Tetley or David's Tea...hmm...

My parents buy special Chinese loose leaf tea from a little family owned tea store that costs 20 bucks for 250 grams. That tea is amazing quality and each tea granule unfurls in hot water to become a whole leaf again. Honey bee is pretty minced in comparison. Is the tea I bought good quality? Are there better choices out there? 

David's Tea has an amazing variety with tons of creative concoctions. Their customer service is amazing and the store is both a visual and aromatic delight... but is it all worth it for the price?

Right now I'm still leaning towards going back to try more teas but I don't want to spend a fortune on a couple grams of cured leaves.

What are your opinions of David's Tea? I would love to know!

Thanks for reading and ciao for now~! <3