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Business & Tech

Capital Teas To Open Bethesda Row Location In January

Tea merchant plans 'express' store serving tea by the cup.

Capital Teas, the Annapolis firm which already has a thriving operation at the Wildwood Shopping Center, will open its newest location on Bethesda Row in January.

As owner Peter Martino and several helpers were moving their equipment into 4806 Bethesda Avenue last week, next to the Dunkin' Donuts, he told Patch that they plan to open for business early in the new year.

The move to Bethesda Row comes a bit later than originally planned. Martino told Bethesda Magazine's Table Talk blog in November he hoped to open before Thanksgiving, but said delays in getting work done by the contractors pushed the opening day back by a few weeks.

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Table Talk first reported the chain's move to Bethesda Row.

The new location will offer 120 varieties of loose tea. Significantly, it will also sell tea by the cup year round, plus iced tea and tea smoothies in the warmer months.

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“It will be more like a Capital Teas Express,” Martino said of the Bethesda Row store in a telephone interview.  “It will be smaller than our place at Wildwood, but we will be serving tea by the cup there, something we don’t do at Wildwood.” 

Capital Teas has other locations in Annapolis, National Harbor at the Gaylord Resort, Georgetown and Dupont Circle in addition to the Wildwood location.

Martino said he probably could have opened earlier but he would have had to spend all his time on getting it done.

“We opened up at Wildwood on schedule, but I personally spent 22 straight days there to make sure that it happened,” he recalled.

He said business at Wildwood is going “super well” since opening in November of 2010.

Capital Teas was founded by Manelle and Peter Martino of Annapolis in the summer of 2007, building on Manelle Martino's family tradition in the tea business which traces all the way back to her great, great grandfather, a Dutch tea planter who emigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Family members also operate Elmstock Teas in Australia.

Peter Martino started and sold a software business and said he decided to get into the tea business “because it looked like a very logical choice” given his family connections.

Their first store, only a block from the oldest state capitol in the nation in Annapolis, proved successful. In recent years, the chain has expanded in rapid succession, first to National Harbor, then to Wildwood at 10231 Old Georgetown Road late in 2010 and finally to the two D.C. locations early in 2011.

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