Take a look inside Japan's most beautiful flower tea house, where a flower shop and a tea house come together perfectly

Opening a flower shop is a dream for many people, and opening a tea house is a wish for many people too.

"Why not combine the two?"

Hideaki Inoue, owner of Aoyama Flower Market in Tokyo, Japan, thought this way.

In fact, Hideaki Inoue has successfully opened Aoyama Flower Market all over Japan, making it a famous flower shop chain, with 77 stores nationwide. You can see this shop in subway stations, train stations, supermarkets, and even on streets and in alleys.

This chain flower shop, located in a busy district, is different from other flower shops that are always too neatly arranged. The flowers displayed and sold at Aoyama Flower Market are arranged somewhat messily, yet abundantly so. Rare and exotic flowers imported from all over the world, some whose names people cannot even pronounce, are placed lavishly in buckets, sold by the stem.

And the local flowers transported to Tokyo from various parts of Japan look even more vibrant, giving a kind of joy like leaving the city behind and returning to one's hometown, making it impossible to look away.

Aoyama Flower Market's owner Hideaki Inoue did not come from a floral design background, yet he has made this flower shop deeply memorable. He runs the flower shop like a stylish little shop selling fresh bread and pastries on the way home from work, tempting and homey. Every day there are recommended flowers that follow the seasons, making people linger, just as spring is the season when tulips bloom, and the flowers in the shop are piled layer upon layer up high. May is the time when peonies bloom, and when you walk in, a mountain and sea of flowers rush toward you, making people unable to resist buying a bouquet to take home.

Aoyama Flower Market's business philosophy is to let every flower lover take a bouquet of fresh flowers home, making fresh flowers a part of life and an everyday thing (Living With Flowers Everyday).

But what makes it different from traditional chain stores is that no two of these flower shops spread across the streets and alleys of Japan have the same store layout. Besides catering to the aesthetics and needs of consumers in different places, the most important thing is that the operator gives each store manager full trust and authority. From store layout to product display, from flower material categories to floral gift design, everything in the store is fully managed by the store manager. However, there is only one thing that cannot be changed, and that is the service quality of Aoyama Flower Market. This is probably the true essence of Aoyama Flower Market's successful operation.

After making the flower shop so successful, he also opened a tea-related chain store: Aoyama Flower Market TEA HOUSE.

This shop truly lives up to the name of a flower tea house. Everywhere in the store are fragrant, soft flowers, every table also has fresh flowers, and even the tableware brought out is decorated with beautiful flowers.

The shop's main idea is to live with flowers every day (Living with Flowers Everyday). Besides the beautiful floral environment, it also incorporates flowers into meals (and tea). The flower-filled garden salad, the French toast covered with blooming flowers, the crystal-clear rose jelly, and the fresh herbal flower tea blended with five kinds of flowers and plants are all popular dishes.

Many shopping malls in China are now facing a crisis of hollowing out. What kind of business format should be introduced? How to compete with e-commerce and online shopping? These are the most troublesome problems for many shopping malls.

Experience, experience, experience. In the end, everything still comes back to how to give customers the best experience, a refreshing shopping or consumption experience.

In fact, whether opening a flower shop, a tea shop, a coffee shop or a restaurant, the form of operation is no longer the most important factor, and the items being sold are not the point either.

For the operation of physical stores, the most important thing is still what kind of experience and service people can get from them.

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