of Chris' Tea House & the look-forward closing date of 18/01/12 & N Thnks fr th Mmrs

Chris' Tea House will stop its tea cafe business for the public on 18 January 2012.

The keywords to be highlighted from the above joyful news is 'for the public'.

Mrs Christina Lim in her obviously self-consoling statement to SoShiok.com declared that 'she could have kept the tea house as a hobby and continue living a comfortable life instead of working hard to run it as a business and having to face the barrage of unkind remarks by flamers'.

She also added that she would keep the tea house to entertain her 'regulars', friends and associates.

What a horror!! The rest of Singaporeans are deprived of the pleasure of sipping a cup of tea in a high-class tea house.

What a great loss!! We have lost the reasons for living. Oh, woe are we...Not!

Who cares, really?

After being bludgeoned continously into closing down by flamers, Chris' Tea House has decided to stop its tea cafe business for the public on January 18.

Mrs Christina Lim, the owner of the controversial restaurant, said the last straw came when she kept receiving "harassment" from an anonymous person calling her mobile phone.

She told SoShiok.com that she has made police reports and "hopes the harassment will stop soon". She does not wish to reveal details of the harassment as police investigations are still going on.

While it will stop serving tea, the charming tea house at Upper Paya Lebar will continue operating its retail front which offers chinaware, tea and other tea paraphernalia.

She added: "I will be keeping the place but still thinking of other business to venture into."

The tea house was the target of online flamers after her daughter
called a customer "cheapskate" for making unreasonable demands and comments when he didn't spend a lot of money there, and for not understanding the practice of a "highclass" tea house.

Those remarks irked the customer's supporters who gave her and her mother a relentless bashing on a few websites.

Even though her daughter apologised subsequently for her remarks and Mrs Lim had explained her position on customer service and restaurant rules, online flamers continued to attack them.

Some even called for a boycott of the tea house.

But the tea house also had its supporters who slammed the flamers online, arguing that they should have proper etiquette when visiting the place.

Actually Mrs Lim had no intention of opening her tea house to the public initially.

She had bought the shophouse as an investment, and turned her tea appreciation hobby into a masssive project - a period English tea house decorated with matching furniture like wing chairs, fine porcelain and colourful tea paraphernalia.

Friends fell in love with it too and suggested she opened it to the public.

She followed their suggestion and also offered companies the use of the tea house as an event venue at a fee.

But she also found out quite soon that it wasn't a viable business what with the small size of the place and its cheap pricing.

She had told SoShiok.com that she could have kept it as a hobby and continue living a comfortable life instead of working hard to run it as a business and having to face the barrage of unkind remarks by flamers.

Mrs Lim said she would keep the tea house to entertain her 'regulars', friends and associates.

So it will be closed to the public, but open to her best supporters!

From Soshiok.com, "Chris' Tea House to stop serving tea because of harassment".

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For posterity, as I sincerely believe a similar devastating PR move by Chris' Tea House ought to be avoided at all cost--yeah, what a painful way to learn 'a bad publicity is still a BAD publicity':


- Screenshot of HWZ forum ,"Chris Tea House finally down for the count":



- Screenshot of HWZ forum, "Tea house call customer cheapskate online in order to clear misunderstanding":



- Screenshot of Channel 5 TV series, "Small & Beautiful" featuring Chris' Tea House (actually somewhat a good publicity):



- Screenshot of STOMP, "Owner rudely 'spat' to family that no babies are allowed at new tea house in Paya lebar":



- Screenshot of SoShiok.com, "Chris' Tea House's business hardly dented by online threats":



The hilarious highlight of this article has got to be:

Reported a happy Mrs Lim: "We had only a slight dip in business."

Uh-huh, right...right...

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PS. The last part of the title of this post 'N Thnks fr th Mmrs' is inspired by the Fall Out Boy hit song, "Thnks fr the Mmrs'.



So if 'Thnks fr th Mmrs' refers to 'Thanks for the Memories', it's not altogether a mystery of what 'N' refers too, no? Heh. ;)