Side Hustle: Find My Tea
Firstly, we’d like to offer you a warm welcome to our new Side Hustle blog series. A collection of passion projects that have evolved into small businesses and creations built on buckets of personal motivation, late nights and unfathomable amounts of coffee. We’re kicking off the series with our first instalment about the ‘Find My Tea’ app.
We were absolutely thrilled to sit down with Paul Grenyer, who is a Senior Platform Engineer at Snoop by day, and Founder of the innovative app FindMyTea by night, which allows you to find cafés and eateries which stock your favourite tea!
On average in the UK we drink over 100 million cups of tea a day. Whether it’s parents gluing a cup to their palm after dropping the kids off at school, or it’s a businessperson picking up a cup “to go” before a busy meeting, tea is intertwined into the lifeblood of UK culture.
With a career in Software Engineering spanning 20+ years, we had to understand how the world of Technology and Tea came to coexist as a side hustle for Paul.
The lightbulb moment began when Paul had started his new role at Snoop, which was in January 2020. An avid tea drinker, he was on the hunt for his favourite brand but couldn’t find it. He then thought about creating a mobile app which would enable tea drinkers to find café’s and coffee shops which stocked their favourite brands, and FindMyTea was born.
“I initially had the idea of creating the app specifically for Teapigs tea, but they wouldn’t give me their data, so instead I expanded it to all brands and types!”
Paul quickly began building the app, but is yet to see it perform in its full glory as we have been in and out of national lockdowns since March 2020. However, it’s been a great opportunity to refine the app and ensure that there is plenty of data on there.
“We have over 13,000 retailers and café’s registered, so we’re currently enriching the data, so you can understand which brands are served where”.
Completely bootstrapped, Paul is (of course) planning world domination with his app, and explained that overall the cost of setting up and refining the app is a “good use for pocket money”, rather than a giant expense.
Naturally in the future, he would like to see his side hustle turn into something profitable, but for now, it’s rewarding to build something that works well and offers a free service to other tea drinkers.
Although we’re a big fan of side hustle’s here at Orbis, it’s important to note that side hustles can become time-consuming, so it’s important to think about the challenges you may face.
In Paul's case, he can work on the app before and after work, as well as weekends (only with his wife's permission, his words not ours). His day job with Snoop will always come first, and his side hustle enables him to develop his skills further whilst marrying his two passions together.
The biggest reward that Paul has gained from creating FindMyTea is the victory that comes with seeing the app work seamlessly, as in his words, “there’s no substitute for something working!”. It was a special moment for him to see his passion for tea turn into a fully functioning side hustle, and once he focuses on monetising it, the rest will be history.
Further notes about the founder
Husband, father, software engineer, metaller, Paul has been writing software for over 35 years. In that time, he’s worked with a range of companies from startups to world famous investment banks and insurance companies. He’s built three limited companies, none of which have made him a millionaire (yet…)
Paul was a founding member of both SyncNorwich and Norfolk Developers, two of the most successful tech and startup based community groups in the East. He created and chaired the hugely successful Norfolk Developers Conference (nor(DEV):con) for seven years bringing in speakers and delegates in the sphere of software engineering from around the globe.
Paul is currently a Senior Platform Engineer at the Fintech startup Snoop and the founder of the tea finding app, Find My Tea.
In fact, he loathes the word Entrepreneur, not least because he struggles to spell it and it reminds him of Del Boy from the 80s sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He sees Entrepreneurship as a side effect of the creative process of problem-solving, rather than a career path in its own right.
Despite having dealt with the world of business, Paul has kept both feet firmly on the ground even when his head has been in the clouds with healthy doses of Heavy Metal, Science Fiction, Formula One and long hair - until it started falling out in 2013.
Oh, and he loves good tea too!
You can download FindMyTea on the App Store for iPhone or Google Play for any other mobile device. You can also support Paul and the brand on “Buy Me A Coffee” today! We wish Paul all the success with his side hustle.
Have you got a side hustle you want to talk about? Email us, we would love to feature you in this series.
