hello everybody and welcome back to our channel we're Eamon and Bec and we live
full time in our self converted Sprinter van today we thought we would show you
guys around our 1,000 square foot office in Toronto Ontario Canada we run a
number of businesses out of this tiny space and we thought we'd give you a
proper tour of how we do that what it looks like it's kind of organized we
cleaned it up a little bit it's still a chaotic mess well that's good let's get
into it together Eamon and I started a tea company called Chaiwala back in
2015 and he's always been super forward-thinking so he knew to look for
an office space well before we needed an office space because we're in one of the
biggest cities in Canada so luckily Eamon found us this one thousand square
foot office we moved in and we've been here for about two years so let's start
by offering you guys a cup of chai welcome to our little cafe on wheels we
bring this thing around to different shows if you are a really really good
customer sometimes we get you a free latte on the house no guarantees today
I'm gonna make you guys a little chai real quick nice big scoop of chai wallah
a chai a little hot water in there and let that steep for couple minutes so I
actually designed this setup because we're going around to lots of different
shows and we wanted a quick way to be able to steam up hot lattes on the spot
so we didn't need the use of an actual regular espresso machine found a company
in Italy to make steam boiler and and actually
design the drip tray so it's easy to rinse out your jugs you can just pour
your water out and rinse them and yeah it's worked fantastic for all the
different trade shows that we go to it's gonna add some soy milk and steam that
up nice and hot I'll get back to the tour in just one second I'm just gonna
pour you a fresh cup of chai let's continue with the tour the main business
we've run out of this space is our chai Company we started with one blend the
original chai blend and our focus was on selling to independent coffee shops and
cafes so cool sailing and our wholesalers started packaging that up
and selling to consumers as a retail product and we thought hey we can do
that too so I thought I'd show you guys how we package that up and then tell you
about our second blend as well so essentially these are our kilogram bags
this is what normally goes to the cafe or to those of you who are completely
obsessed with the childlike means and these are the retail form of our
original blend so it's a hundred and fifty grams worth of the chai perfect
for at-home use the last thing we do is we put it into a kit so this kit has
everything including the chai a pot and a strainer to make your chai at home and
the last thing we've recently introduced is our rooibos chai bun so it's the
exact same spices all the same goodies it just replaces the black tea with a
rooibos tea which is a red horrible plant so that it's a non caffeinated
beverage you can have before bed now these shelves don't normally look as
beautiful and well faced as this because this is just a wholesale office but it
does feel really good we can make everything in small batches so we've
spent a lot of time over the past two weeks making lots of product for you
guys so the shows are looking quite nice and I'll follow you guys into this area
which is the beginning of shipping and receiving and we can kind of talk
through our workflow here I am NOT the shipping and receiving expert that is
actually b.o.b Bob you guys probably seen him if you watch our other videos
but we both kind of design this space so we wanted everything easy
accessible although we make kind of 1/2 products there are a lot of little
add-ons that we have and believe it or not it gets complicated so when it comes
to small business shipping is so important and especially saving money on
the boxes and the sizes that you pack it in is key so if you get a good shipper
you'll save a lot of money so we have everything easy accessible so we keep
our rooibos here the original blend here are more inventory down at the bottom we
also sell cinnamon strainers and tea filters on their own and this is kind of
where we start to build all the packages together this is something that I
actually bought before we even moved into the speed just because it came in
orange and I thought it was freaking awesome but it actually does serve a
great purpose so it's just a pump truck so you can pump stuff up moving her on
this is his little garage that he lives in so even if we need to move that
garage around we can just quickly do that and then it gets out of the way I
just quickly wanted to say that you and your you and your dad and me we moved
into this space and it was completely empty shell we had that yet like this
wall wasn't here these shelves were in here nothing was here everything was so
DIY we would go around on the streets we moved in around spring and we would find
anything that was on the on the street and just repurpose it for the office
yeah a lot of the wood and pipe material like this from Home Depot yeah we try to
save as much money as possible and we did it all by ourselves
yeah feels so cool okay as we dive a little bit deeper
we actually custom-built this hack looking shelf on top liebherr not it is
super super secure and that's where we inventory even more boxes there's lots
of different box sizes we need to buy so that helps get everything out of the way
we try and use as little plastic as possible so we actually wrap everything
in brown paper and we do that to save money because we don't have to put a box
inside of a box or a canister instead of a box everything just gets wrapped so
the shipping labels go on top so we've got two different sizes
instead of using scissors you can slide the paper just underneath this white
piece of wood squeeze on that and then pull and tear so that works really
really well just little things that will save you a lot of time
shipping process hate looking for pens so we've got five of them permanently
mounted right they're ready to go and that everything's got its home so this
tape gun lives here at all times so if you need to do a box you can just put it
right back this tape gun is mounted sideways so in
case you just need a little piece of tape you can grab that quickly it's got
lots of recycled what I call bubble wrap bubble wraps pretty fun but we recycle
everything we were used I apologize just sometimes your products
don't come in a fancy box because we reuse all of the boxes so this is our
beautifully organized box inventory you like to keep it looking fly and then
that dives a little bit more into my work area back it calls it my play area
but really this is what I thrive at is building stuff
you'll notice another structure suspended from the room that is our
tradeshow booth so we built that a couple years ago and needed a place to
store it but needed it out of the way as we only used it a couple times a year so
that works really well it looks super sketch but it's been there for a year we
can't make our way over to my area without first noting that we have a
basketball net in here not sure why but hey it's a battle I haven't won yet
we're often asked how we're able to make it work working as a couple and living
in such a tiny space together and I think a big part of that is having
really defined rules so not only do we have defined rules but we have separate
areas so you just saw Amon this is kind of my desk and workspace starting with
this little piece remember how I said we picked everything up off the side of the
road this used to be teal blue and a man and I just picked it up for free and
send it down now it's full of label was just documents and expenses and all that
kind of stuff Amon also built me this table I
basically sent him to Home Depot with this Pinterest image and I was like can
you build me this table and he did so yet again Here I am breaking about Amon
but the space is awesome it's a really really big desk often if we have people
over we find ourselves sitting here and hanging out or eating together this
chair was actually Bob's which is a man's dad he had this when he had his
own company and he kind of passed it along to me he did it's the CEO chair
which is my spot so yeah this is an awesome little desk we have a little
hole here where we can charge our laptops charge our ear pods also charge
our phones to match books one for the each of us I don't know why I spoke like
that not only do we email invoice and run our try company from this desk but
we also edit all of our footage to make these YouTube videos for you guys right
here when we're back home in Toronto I'm not sure why but Becca calls
the lounge area this is more of dry inventory so below us we've got the
unopened canisters to the right is the tea pots strainers all just kind of raw
material and then further above us is some wholesale canisters so we got this
shelf used secondhand and it's really maximize the square footage behind me
here we lose these canisters for events so we do hot chai served up in there and
then we found this couch basically on the side of the road slash my parents
contrary to popular belief we don't just drink chai so this is sort of our tea
bar the cart we can call our chai bar so we make all sorts of teas over here we
also hang our employees of the month up it's a new initiative we have here at
chai wallah I was pretty shocked but I was named it in September we have a new
guy on the wall his name's Bob so he was doing a lot of good work coming in early
to peel that chin just so we appreciate you Bob do you guys want to be on the
wall you should apply to work at Thai wall I'm not on the wall I'm sorry
you're not on the wall yet and just quickly like I'll just show you a little
sneak peek it's probably ugliest often of all time but we've worked really hard
to make it kind of pretty so you can come on in
it's basically a toilet and a thing so we bought a lot of this restaurant
equipment use we try to get the best price possible obviously these shelves
I'm surprised they're still up but I built those some three years ago so
that's just cups and cutlery and stuff like that clean white towels love having
the three basin sink nice big open use easy to wash dishes
and then you can hang and dry them up top huge nice counter top so this is
actually where we make the tea everything's made in-house so we
actually grind the spices we blend it we pack it
that's just our steam machine going we pack it we seal it everything gets done
here this is the area where we spend all of our time when it's time to make the
tea so first things first Emma and I will come in will suit up
into our chef's whites we will then put on hairnet gloves your net beard net
it's all stored right here and then all of the dried goods
so the spices pre-cracked that kind of thing are stored on these shelves right
here we're a little low on inventory I know we've been making lots of tea
lately it's a good thing and that's pretty much this area just extra storage
Sam some packaging Sam a sealer we've upgraded over the years to the beautiful
Sam the sealer and we love her so much or he it's a unisex name we've come full
circle that is our one thousand square foot office in the City of Toronto of
Toronto that's not a lot of space so looking for space in Toronto was an
absolute nightmare super difficult to find and not cheap we've spent about
$2,000 a month renting this space I think we're almost at the point where
we're outgrowing it just little things like receiving pallets is becoming more
and more difficult there's nowhere for them to live as you guys can see even
behind me here we didn't really show you but up top there on top of the bathroom
we've got extra boxes no space goes unused sort of like the van yeah we're
actually low on inventory right now in the next couple weeks we'll be getting
more and more product in and you should see the play so stay tuned for her
videos because it just gets both worn out maybe one day we'll have a little
space with a chai barking lab where you guys can come and visit us pop in grab a
buddy cafe vibes oh I thought we'd never
reopen science on but we're really over don't really have set hours
here if you guys are interested you can always order out the RT online if you're
in Toronto you can visit a number of our cafe partners those are listed on our
website under the find us page anyways we hope you guys enjoyed touring around
our tiny space that we make work for multiple businesses if you did enjoy the
video please make sure you give it a big thumbs up subscribe to our channel for
van-like content on Sundays and Wednesdays and food related videos on
Fridays anything else you want to say there that's it guys maybe we will see
you around the city yeah if you ever see it make sure you say hi oh you guys can
come up here in Toronto what we've been preparing for if you're interested in
visiting us at a show we are gearing up for the one-of-a-kind show here in
Toronto it runs from November 22nd to December 2nd at the under care center
downtown we will be there we are going to be bringing our 10-foot boot that's
hanging from the ceiling the chai bar will be there there'll be all sorts of
fun stuff going down we'll be rapping and singing and fixing me rapping and
saying if we've tried that last bit of the video like 10 times so I think we're
done with this vid stir make sure you like and subscribe we'll see you in
another one
hmm I'll just cut and my son yeah it was mine okay yeah let's go for a jog okay
mm-hmm so we make cha mm a try company sorry
I'm independent if that seam didn't make it very obvious we own a okay edit and
fill No so I whoa whoa what else we got booze
here a hole puncher what I'm think we've done the tour
you