by Heidi Kyser

When Natick, Mass.-based GayGrace Teas needs to do some marketing, all owner Gay Hughes has to do is take a drive in her Mobile Tea Room.

The 21-foot truck is wrapped in a vinyl graphic taken from a photo of an English garden scene, complete with cottage, bench and flower-boxed windows. Once parked, its side door opens to reveal a full kitchen inside, complete with ornate wood cabinetry, granite counter-tops and copper tin siding. A red-and-white awning stretches over a takeaway window where customers can choose scones and sandwiches from glass domed displays and see the pots where tea is brewing.

"People are always pulling over, walking up to me and saying, 'Oh my god! This is absolutely wonderful!'" Hughes said. "We have nothing in our line item for advertising, because the truck does it for us."

This helps to redeem the huge price tag that came with the vinyl wrap, her second largest start-up cost after the truck, which was a former espresso-on-wheels operation in New Jersey that Hughes found on e-Bay. Together, the truck and wrap ate up most of the business loan she took to get the mobile tea room running in mid-July of this year.

Hughes began planning the business a little more than a year ago, around the time her daughter left for college in the fall of 2007. She'd been organizing tea parties for friends, associates and her local community for nearly six years when someone suggested she do it professionally.

"I've always wanted to have my own tea shop, so I decided this was the perfect time to do that," she said.

Hughes looked at several brick and mortar store fronts and found that they were either in bad locations or too expensive. She had thought about doing a mobile tea room, but didn't share the idea with anybody, because, she said, it seemed a little silly.

"I started to work with the Small Business Administration and SCORE," she said. "They told me it was risky business opening a store front, especially these days, and asked if I'd thought outside the box." She told them about her mobile tea room idea, and her SCORE counselor loved it. "He told me to run with it," she said. So she did.

The mobile tea room's main selling point is that it takes tea to people where they are, instead of waiting for customers to come to a fixed location. Based on her familiarity with garden centers and their importance in New England culture, Hughes researched the possibility of partnering with them. It soon became clear they could provide staple business for the mobile tea room.

"They offer a huge scope of products to people and are trying to become destination locations," Hughes said. "People come and bring their grandmother or their kids, and want to spend hours there and make it a whole experience. So they [the garden centers] were pretty amenable to having a mobile tea room on their premises as a service they could offer to their customers."

Hughes has regularly scheduled appearances at Russells Garden Center in Wayland, Mass., and Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton, Mass. Visitors quickly began suggesting that Hughes take the tea room to various fairs and festivals. She started a list and, after researching those suggested, carefully picks a few to try.

"The first festival we did was a juried craft fair at the Codman Estate in Lincoln, Mass.," she said. "That's the kind of thing we're looking for."

This has helped her reach the masses, Hughes said, but added that the economy, weather, and food and gas prices probably will force her to revise down her projections for the coming year. Things have been slower than expected at her two regular locations, mainly because of unusually heavy rainfall in the Northeast this year.

Still, she's optimistic. "Everywhere I go, the response I get from people is amazing," she said.