From the Inside….

When you're looking into buying a franchise you want to know everything about the business you are investing in. It's not just the costs; it's also the company itself. Does the company and the people who you are investing in match what you are searching for. As a member of the tumble & tea café team I wanted to take this chance to lay out the nitty-gritty about what it is really like to be a part of the company and to work for our CEO, Georgina DeCarlo.

As the youngest member of the team, I came in thinking there was going to be a great deal of the "corporate" feel. You know a company where the CEO seems to suffer from a "God-like" complex and employees are reminded daily of just who exactly is in charge. The polar opposite could not be truer. Working with Gina one almost instantaneously forgets she is the boss. She has a natural ease with how she deals with people one-on-one, and it's when you see her coolly handle any situation that you are reminded why she is in charge.

For someone who has built this company from nothing, it amazes me how grounded Gina is. Employees become friends, and friends become family. Work is just as important as whom you work with, and I can testify to loving who I work with just as much as loving my work! It's the same across the board with everyone in tumble & tea café. We work hard, pouring hours into creating the best tumble & tea café franchise program, and striving to make tumble & tea café a household name; but we also know the importance of staying sane after a long days work is rewarded over margaritas and love-life gossip.

In the end I can't sum up things better than by simply stating how lucky and blessed I feel to be part of something like tumble & tea café. The café itself is such a groundbreaking concept and the team is made up of so many smart people gifted in their perspective fields. I love my job, I love Gina, I love everyone who is a part of the team, and I LOVE TUMBLE & TEA CAFÉ.
From Diane Zuniga, Director of Marketing and PR

Balancing Parenting and Your Career

Saying it is difficult to balance motherhood and career is an understatement. Finding the perfect balance between work-life, mom-life, and my adult-life was a challenge for me. I was constantly feeling guilty for not spending enough time with my daughter, guilty for always being tired and guilty that I wasn’t working the same hours I did before my daughter was born. I was working for a big corporation and I was on someone else’s schedule. I felt trapped. I remember locking myself in the supply closet with a picture of my daughter to start my milk flowing so I could pump, thinking, “This is just not right.”

Not only did that get my milk flowing, but my ideas started to flow as well. I came to the overwhelming realization that I did not want to work FOR anyone else again. Did they appreciate me? I worked 9 hours the day before I had Leila and did the owner of this big bank know who I was?

And that was the beginning of it all. I have owned and operated my own businesses since then. There comes a time when you choose to do what you want- not what you are conditioned to do. There comes a time when you are ready to stop thinking about making a change but really make it. And there comes a time that you decide the best person to work for is yourself and the time is now to love what you do!

Most of the people who I have spoken to about owning a tumble & tea café are currently where I was in that supply closet. Ok, maybe they are not pumping breast milk but they feel over worked, under appreciated and pulled in too many directions. They are ready to set their own schedule, get credit and compensation for their hard work and own their own business!

Now starting your own business is by no means “easy” and being self-employed doesn’t magically fix the incredible balancing act of being a working mom. I often say owning your own business isn’t for the faint of heart. But being self employed allows you to set your own schedule and manage your workload for what is best for you and your family. Most importantly, owning your own business allows you to directly benefit from YOUR hard work. You make the decisions, you have room to be creative and you are rewarded for your hard work and dedication.

We have hundreds of request nationwide from people who want to own their own tumble $ tea cafe. Why are all these people interested in tumble & tea café? Because they get it! They see this huge market gap and they want to be the pioneers of this concept that we believe will be the new craze. tumble & tea café is a posh, wifi café that serves made to order food, excellent espresso drinks and caters not only to parents but the whole neighborhood. You have multiple streams of income from food & beverage sales, playspace admission, parties, caterings and events. People nationwide see the need for tumble & tea café in their neighborhoods.

Ok, so you are ready to start your own business and you are ready to love your work opposed to watching the clock tick until 5:00. You might be asking yourself a few of the following questions.
How do you start a café?
What permits do you need?
What characteristics are important for your location?
How do you design a café with a play space for kids?
What suppliers should I use?
What should my overhead be?

And this is why I decided to franchise tumble & tea café. We are 100% dedicated and committed to helping you open and operate your café. You don’t have the answers because you haven’t done this before- we have. We have the answers, we know the contacts and we have the team to teach you step by step about what you need to do to meet your goals.
Please feel free to contact me at anytime if you have questions about tumble & tea café or if you would like to talk to me about if opening your own business is a good idea for you. I look forward to talking with you. Love your life and viva tumble & tea café! Gina DeCarlo, Founder and CEO, georginadecarlo@yahoo.com.

NEW CAFÉ CONCEPT LETS PARENTS BE ADULTS AND KIDS BE KIDS

tumble & tea café is a posh wifi café with and indoor playspace for kids. Serving breakfast, lunch & weekend brunch, the incredible food isn’t the only reason to stop in for a visit. tumble and tea café has an amazing custom-designed indoor playspace for kids to enjoy so their parents are able to relax and recharge. This rare find has received much success and has recently started awarding franchises nationwide.

tumble & tea cafe is unique because it caters to both adults and children. The café has a posh, comfortable yet hip ambiance and offers a variety of dishes for breakfast, lunch and weekend brunch. Every item on the menu is made fresh when ordered and prepared with the best ingredients possible. From espresso drinks and breakfast sandwiches to signature gourmet paninnis, soups and salads; tumble & tea café’s menu will fill you up and keep you coming back for more.

The play space is safe and secure. It is enclosed by a transparent fence with only one entrance and exit to make it easy to keep an eye on your child. Best of all, this play space is visible from every seat in the café so parents can relax and enjoy themselves while the kids amerce themselves in play.

Since its doors opened in August 2006, tumble & tea café has become the home-away-from-home for many parents and their children. The unique ability of the café to cater to adults and their children as well has helped it thrive and inspired hundreds of nationwide requests for their own neighborhood tumble & tea cafe. In response, tumble & tea cafe is awarding franchises and will be opening locations nationwide.

tumble and tea cafe history

COMPANY HISTORY

tumble & tea café began out of the creative mind of Founder and CEO, Georgina DeCarlo. The concept arose out of necessity for Georgina during a period of transition. When her daughter Leila had just turned one, she ended her seven year marriage and the divorce was anything but civil. Georgina became a casualty of layoffs and the physical distance from her family left her without a daily support system. She was left lonely, scared and depressed.

After the dust started to settle, Georgina realized everything she identified herself with was gone. Her perfect little family, house and career were all destroyed in what seemed to be the blink of an eye. The questions mounted. Who am I? How can I support my daughter? And what do I want to do with my life?

With help from friends, the depression and loneliness began to subside and as Georgina spent more time raising her daughter, she realized there weren’t places that catered to adults and children. That is when the idea for tumble and tea cafe started to become a reality. She would spend countless hours doing research and developing strategies and business plans well into the night. You might say tumble and tea café was originally a home-based business because its design and operations were literally created at the kitchen table.

After months of research, Georgina decided to take this new business venture head on. That was the beginning of the tumble & tea café concept: a posh, wifi café with an amazing indoor play space for kids. Georgina decided to create a place that catered to the neighborhood and parents by offering them delicious food, a stylish ambience, wifi, great music and a place to meet, mingle, relax and recharge, while providing children with a custom-designed indoor play space that is educational as well as fun.

Georgina knew she needed help getting the café off the ground and managed properly so she asked one of her good friends to be her partner. They both worked very hard and through adversity, constraints and the demands of motherhood, the doors opened a year later. tumble and tea café was a reality! All of the time, money, and hopes where realized when tumble & tea café opened its doors in the summer of 2006.

Georgina worked virtually every day to build, create and modify her vision to ensure that tumble and tea café would meet her projections. Her efforts clearly started to pay off. The café became a local hot spot and a real life home-away-from home for many bay area parents. They loved that their neighborhood had a new and fresh posh hang out and a space for parents who didn’t want to stop being adults. This novel concept got the press talking and soon tumble and tea café was featured in many publications and television shows throughout the U.S.

Now, after years in operation and over 600 worldwide requests for franchises, Georgina has decided to meet the demand for tumble and tea cafés nationwide through awarding franchise opportunities. We are proud to say that since we have begun the franchise process, Georgina’s original partner is now the sole-owner of the first tumble and tea café in Oakland, California.

“What better way to meet the incredible demand for tumble & tea cafes than to teach other people how to be business owners?” says DeCarlo. “I want to help people by providing a relaxing, local hang out, a paradise for parents and a great business for people who want even more.”

Our comprehensive franchising program has been designed to ensure that franchisees receive the maximum experience from their own tumble & tea café. Through custom restaurant and play space designs, top notch marketing tools, a standardized and comprehensive operations manual and most importantly continual training of all franchisees and employees, tumble & tea café has gone through great strides to build a franchise program that will continue to uphold the standards of excellence that Founder and CEO Georgina DeCarlo began when the doors of tumble and tea café first opened.

tumble & tea café firmly believes in quality over quantity and we strive to provide top notch service for our customers. Our company’s goal is to create tumble and tea café franchises that are built on a solid foundation of both dedicated and qualified franchisees and customer satisfaction; ensuring every tumble and tea café experience is a positive one.