Food and Drink, Local Business

Travelers Tea Co. asks for your support tonight

6 Comments
Travelers Tea Company has added bright new color to the purple house on Beacon Avenue. Photo by Wendi.
The new Travelers restaurant at 2524 Beacon Ave. S. has been open for a month or so now, serving Indian food and also selling Indian cooking supplies from a tiny store in the restaurant. However, opening the new restaurant along with their existing Capitol Hill location has apparently put the business into a financial crunch. Here’s a message posted today on their Facebook page:

Dear Fellow Travelers,

We’ve always been open with our customers, our community, when we’ve needed your help, and you have always come through for us. Thank you for your continuing support that has allowed us to survive 13 years, including some very hard times. Travelers is again at a difficult point, our survival depends upon your support.

We have been really excited about our new restaurant, and we were slammed with customers when we opened the doors. We hired more people, “real servers,” more kitchen support, a Nepali farm woman (seriously!). All great folks. But business has dropped off, and the bills kept coming. Payday is coming, and we need your help.

Here’s what we are doing to make us easy to support

Payroll Party! Thursday night September 22nd, come help us harvest enough bounty to compensate our wonderful staff and get us through our big crunch. To make it a real party we are offering a couple of super deals

Get an extra 20% with any $100 gift certificate
Take 20% off any sale totaling $100 or more

You can add up lots of little stuff and still get the 20% discount. With the certificates, the extra 20% can be a separate $20 certificate if you prefer. We’ll be open at both locations with tasty food and beverages. We have wine and beer too at the Beacon location (try a Taj from India, or a Kingfisher), delicious with pakoras.

Though we don’t like reviewing restaurants until they’ve been open for a few months, we’ve been to Travelers several times already and found the food to be tasty and inexpensive. We like it, and hope they will stay around.

See also this story at the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog.

6 thoughts on “Travelers Tea Co. asks for your support tonight”

  1. We are so lucky to have Traveler’s in our neighborhood. I’ve eaten there several times, and their food is tasty and affordable. Please support this business, so that they’ll remain part of our diverse neighborhood.

  2. Yeah, my family and I ate there for the first time this weekend, and had some amazing Thali. I know we’ll be back, and hope that the rest of the neighborhood continues to support them.

  3. I enjoy the food at Travelers, but I’m not surprised they are struggling. I’ve watched in bemusement for the past 8 months, struggling with management’s lackadaisical style. When they finally opened I was excited…! Except for weeks their “soft” opening was so soft you could never tell when they would be open. I went three times only to discover they were closed that day (twice for lunch, once for dinner). A fourth time I got smart and decided to call first before going with friends and family. But strange… no information on their website at all. I had to call their Cap. Hill location to find out if the Beacon Hill one was open. Turns out it wasn’t (thankfully I hadn’t walked their with my family…)! And for some reaons wasn’t open the next evening either.

    Also, the food — while good — is confusingly presented in their menu. Frankly, the menu is baffling. You know you are in trouble when the server confesses that they can’t make heads or tails of it and were dismayed at explaining it a dozen times a night…

    Their chai tea is excellent, and the food is tasty though not particularly spicy (hot). Their menu is too cutsy by far, and not practical. I went with a friend, and he complained that the way the Thali is served didn’t let him “mix his flavors around” — every little thing is served in a tiny bowl.

    Did I mention it took forever to get our water?

    I love the idea of a healthy, flavorful Indian restaurant in the neighborhood, but honestly, a much-too-laid-back management style re: opening the place, and a cutsy/baffling menu may prove too much for this one. Which is too bad because it would be the 2nd recent restaurant in that location to go under due to poor management choices. 🙁

  5. Just left Travelers completely hungry and bummed out by the entirely crappy service. We waited about 1 hour and 15 minutes after ordering for our food which never arrived before we left in this soooOoo unsatisfied state. Went right to Baja bistro and enjoyed. I loveTravelers but won’t put myself through this again. I read this blog post and felt bad now I just feel sad for them!

  6. I desperately want Travelers to succeed, so I’m writing this in the hope that it will help the service improve. If it doesn’t, this place won’t make it. We’ve had two Fridays in a row of watching the one really capable server (the guy with glasses) run around like a maniac, keeping the place running, while the other guy (owner?) barely seems conscious. Unfortunately, that guy was our assigned “server” both times. The first Friday he was so overwhelmed with even the most basic tasks that we could not make eye contact with him for long stretches of time. We didn’t mind the long wait for our very tasty food, but we did mind being ignored and not having water or wine or being able to order within the first 20 minutes of being there. The second Friday, he showed up after we’d been there for a good long while and *was talking on his phone* despite the fact that a lot of customers needed a lot of things. We hadn’t had the opportunity to order anything yet, so we left and went to Baja, which was also busy but has great service. Travelers: please, please hire another capable server before it’s too late!

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