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STEPPING OUT
If Boulder becomes the Seattle of tea, Paul Cattin will have had something to do with it. Gattin was a two-times-a-day man at his favorite coffeehouse in St. Paul while he attended college at the University of St. Thomas. Earning his degree in entrepreneurship required writing a business plan, rather than a thesis. "I was always fascinated with the coffee shop concept," he recalls. "I liked the scene. I liked to hang out with a fresh coffee or grab a drink for the road."
During college he worked at a teahouse, and "I grew a passion for tea," he says. "I sat there like a sponge and absorbed all I could."
By the time he graduated he was "micro-managing" the shop, and he wrote his business plan for his own teahouse.
But it had to be different than the one where he worked. Coffeehouses brewed coffee drinks that taste different than coffee. "There was no reason not to do that with tea," he decided, recognizing that sophisticated coffee and tea drinkers shared the same, trendy devotion to health and lifestyle.
LONGMONT...