Look around, it’s hidden in plain sight

✍️REEDSY 

🔆🔅

The sound of a passing car and the screeching sound of tires called my attention. Maybe another crazy speedy driver street racing down to the beach walk. It’s sunny and many sunbathers are congregating down at the beach. An everyday scene for sunny beach days down Marbella Beach. 

Couldn’t take the opportunity to join all these exhilarating feelings that everyone’s getting when going to Daytona Bech, the smell the burning tires and the sounds of pneumatic drill unscrewing bolts to take out and put back and exchange tires. 

This was my 3rd year at this company, that I was fortunate to be accepted to start working as an office assistant. They had a small sister company where they sold little handmade dolls. I fell in love with them. These dolls were hand sewn by a special needs group of women, they somehow learned how to put them together. This was a fundraiser company. All the proceeds went to their hospital for blind kids in Kenya. They were really cute. They also made little bears as keychains. Very cute bear key chains. They also made tooth fairies that you hang on the side of the head boards. 

They came with a little loop to hang them and a little pocket where the child’s tooth would be placed.

The next day the tooth fairy would leave a toonie, loonie or any money to their kid to buy some candies or whatever they needed. This was different to what I learned when I was a kid. I had to put my tooth under the pillow. The tooth fairy then at night would take it and leave behind a coin for the tooth….

Every now and then I was offered to do some other errands at the office. 

Sometimes filled on line orders, sometimes customer service, sometimes office administration. 

One day the company decided to change their market target and niche, as the need for expanding was pretty much needed. Management was really interested in venturing into healthy drinks. Since we were close to the beach, a venue pretty much needed for cold drinks would’ve been a great idea. Iced tea was just being welcomed into the new rapid expanding market as a healthy alternative to cold beer snd milkshakes.

Tea came into place, iced tea on summer hot tea on winter cold days. 

Great for young skin, high in polyphenols, inmune system booster, burn calories, low in caffeine, just to mention some, tea is the favourite of the new generations, kids and adults. 

The company quickly started to gain followers and sales started to take off and my duties started to multiply. 

It did better than the doll company in sales which eventually slowly went down underpowered by the iced tea sales.

I started to mix and prepare more tea blends, turned into a type of a tea master, creating new blends and exotic names. Pineapple and oranges. Berries family. Banana and Strawberries. Black teas from India, Kenya, you name it. There were loose bulk teas with a hint of orange and cream. Green teas. Oolong teas. White teas. I decided to indulge myself into this new world of manufacturing, mixing and toasting teas. Although my interest was not to to grown tea, roast and mix, was in the mixing already harvested and flavoured teas to come up with new flavours. 

Mixed berries would be ‘Crazy for berries’, Pineapple and oranges - ‘Island Feast’, and many more.

I also noticed these teas could be converted into slushy and ice cream pallets for the thirsty beach goers!

Cookies and desserts, bread and smoke meats.

Kiawah Fine Brews’ brought many of my dreams come true. A window of opportunities and dreams I never thought were to open up for me. I could even use these teas to be drunk during winter times, of course the friendly island beach store turned into a eatery and grill to satisfy all whims, during pregnancy or when in stress, people came to indulge into these luscious treats.

It was a good time for creating desserts, baked goods, drinks etc. You name it, it’s possible. 

Opportunities come like a flowing river after a dry season. My experience also expanded. I took this opportunity to develop my creativity, creating also a small documentary and write a new book about my trips to tea growers on the search of better and new types of tea. Yes, life has a lot of opportunities. I met a lot of people, language was a bit of a barrier but curiosity and the eagerness to do business helped greatly to close deals between grower, producer and seller.

I was given the opportunity to learn something new, in exchange the other guys taught me something new about teas. My acknowledgment of teas was growing as well without noticing.

New exciting plans and opportunities were knocking at my door. One day, we welcomed a chef from a hotel chain that was looking for new ways to cook snd use teas.

We presented him with some smoked duck sandwich served with some veggies and for drink some Chinese green tea. Jasmine tea.

He loved it! The rest of the day we spent it talking and exchanging ideas on how to work snd enjoy teas and use them on cooking. Very interesting brainstorming session. Once satisfied with all the talking and writing down details for new blends and where to apply on cooking, went our own ways, hoping to apply them to our large list of products to offer.

We were happy snd excited about it.

All those notes taken and brainstormed on that long surrounded afternoon gave birth to a new chapter to our new business. 

I started to notice on my trips that other growers offered a better quality tea products and were also cultivating their own ingredients I looked for in other growers. My travelling that once open the door to meet other growers, allowed me to meet other type of niches. 

I teamed up with another buyer that wanted to venture my tea blends into a pulverized tea for baking. Japanese people were using that in their baking recipes.

My passion for baking started to surface.

I started using green tea on some cakes and cookies. I found a way to make ice cream with Earl Grey Tea, green and black. Very refreshing.

I have learned that opportunities are present everywhere, and they are present in many different ways. They are not in plain sight, not at easy reach. They come in different sizes and colours. 

My window of opportunity did opened. And I saw it. I let this crazy mind run wild, that married my optimism and crazy creativity that later gave birth to a kid called ‘opportunity’