Snarky Tea House Brings Whimsical Cafe And Retail Shop To Doylestown

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Bucks County is in for a treat when the Snarky Tea House opens for business this week at 24 North Main Street in the heart of Doylestown.

Those who walk through the looking glass and enter this "delightfully offbeat tea shop and cafe" will find themselves immediately immersed in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice In Wonderland,” surrounded by whimsical characters from the popular tale.

Just inside the door, customers will discover the retail shop, offering a constantly changing assortment of Snarky Tea flavors, all produced right here in the Delaware Valley at a warehouse in Hatboro. This is the online company’s first brick-and-mortar location and a dream realized by its owner and founder, Jenni-Lyn Williams of Northampton Township.

"When I came up with the idea of a tea shop, I always wanted to do an Alice In Wonderland theme. This was the perfect spot,” she said of the North Main Street storefront, which sits in the heart of the county seat.

But the retail store is only the first stop on this journey down the rabbit hole.

Jenni-lyn Williams inside the new retail shop. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

Jenni-lyn Williams with Alice. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

The retail store opens up to a sit-down cafe where Snarky Tea can be enjoyed with towers filled with tea sandwiches, cranberry and apricot scones accompanied by cream and jam, Ukrainian hand pies, macarons, and other tasty treats, including a passion fruit eclair.

“When people walk in here, I want them to feel a sense of whimsy," said Williams. "There’s nothing like this around. It’s a one-of-a-kind experience."

With advice from Mycle Gorman from Design Works in Bristol Borough, Williams has decorated the space with characters and scenes from Alice in Wonderland to give it a truly unique feeling. She has even added the story of the "Snark" in tribute to Carroll's other lesser-known story.

Inside the cafe. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

Fruit tarts. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

Cucumber and herbed cream cheese tea sandwiches and a caponata on multigrain. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

The Cheshire Cat smiles from his perch above the cafe. (Jeff Werner/Patch)

"To me, the place is an art installation," said Williams. "The food is art. The walls are art. It’s a transformative experience - a special place right here in the heart of Doylestown.”

Timed ticketed reservations are required for the cafe, where patrons will find a smiling Cheshire Cat looking down on them from above as they eat and a wall of clocks to remind them not to be late.

“It’s a pre-prepared menu so you get the entire tea tower and your choice of Snarky tea,” said Williams.

The cafe's tea menu includes four black teas (Basic Black, Earl Grey, Peachy Keen and Caramel Chai), one green tea (Tropical Sunrise), three herbal teas (Mindful Mint, Hibiscus Glow and Lavender Lemonade) and three fruit teas (Blueberry Apple Pie, Raspberry Lemonade and Blue Pineapple Mango).

"Our black teas are on our menu year-round," said Williams. "We have Peachy Keen, with ripe peach pieces. We have a caramel chai, which has little caramel candies in it. We have one green tea - Tropical Sunrise - with a blend of mango, pineapple and papaya.

"We also have amazing herbal teas. Our Hibiscus Glow, that's our best-selling tea. That has hibiscus, but it also has a pop of butterfly pea flower," she said. "We also have a Lavender Lemonade, also an herbal tea.

"And then we have our best fruit teas," said Williams, calling it the "most approachable tea on the menu," especially for kids. "It's also great for people who are caffeine sensitive, but just want something fun. Those are the teas we are most famous for," she said.

"They're not just good," she says of her selection of Snarky Teas. "They're the best in the business. What we try to do with our teas is to be a very approachable. Everything we do - all of our fruit blends - are made to be approachable to the American palate. We use a lot of fruit. We use a lot of awesome flavor profiles like cotton candy and birthday cake, but we're using real fruit, real botanicals to get that flavor to really shine."

Reservations are now being taken online. Snarky Tea will be closed on Monday and Tuesday. The retail shop will be open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tea times are available Thursday to Sunday with timed seatings between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

The retail store opened for business on Wednesday, while the cafe will serve its first guests on Friday.

How It Began

So how did all this begin?

Williams was working in the insurance business about a decade ago when she was diagnosed with caffeine addiction and was told by her doctor to think about switching her drink preference from coffee and Red Bull to tea.

At about the same time, she was taking a marketing class and one of her assignments was to create her own product and business. That led to the birth of Snarky Tea and a line of profanity-laced teas, which she began selling on the internet in 2016.

The line caught the attention of Vogue magazine, which wrote an article about her business. From there, she was invited to share her product at the Oscars, where she met Randy Jackson from American Idol, who encouraged her to apply to Shark Tank

.To her surprise, in 2017 she was invited onto the show, in which new entrepreneurs pitch their products to a panel of investors. She walked away from that experience with the financial backing of Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful) and Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives. She ended up buying them out in June 2024 as the sole owner of the company.

The company has grown from herself shipping tea out of her King of Prussia home to 30 employees between her new store and her warehouse in Hatboro. “We’ll ship about 250,000 packages this year direct to consumers,” said Williams.

The Snarky Tea House at 24 North Main Street. (Jeff Werner/Patch)