page_title: Argo Tea
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Argo Tea / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Argo Tea State Street
context_page_description: Argo Tea is a chain of tea cafes that was founded in the Lincoln Park community area in Chicago, Illinois, in June 2003. It is now headquartered in Chicago's Loop community area. It had more than a dozen locations in the Chicago metropolitan area before expanding in 2010 to New York City, where it opened four locations that year and then expanded to St. Louis and Boston. As of October 2011 the chain had 26 locations and distribution in over 3,000 grocery stores. In its first decade, it has grown simultaneously with the tea market. Its expansion into grocery stores occurred in 2010 and 2011. Arsen Avakian is the current chief executive officer. By spring 2013, it had opened in Beirut with plans to add locations in five Middle East cities by year end.
  Argo Tea primarily sells a variety of hot and cold tea-based signature drinks. In addition, it offers about three dozen international varieties of loose-leaf tea, coffee, baked goods, small entrées, and teaware. The tea menu includes a variety of black, green, white teas, and natural herbal teas, served hot or iced. Argo Tea has formed a special relationship with Whole Foods Market to distribute Argo products.
context_section_description: Argo set out to be the Starbucks of tea. Argo Tea was launched in 2003 by three partners: Arsen Avakian, Simon Simonian, and Daniel Lindwasser.  Avakian and Simonian are boyhood friends from Armenia.  They grew up in Yerevan and emigrated in the 1990s to the United States, where Simonian, a computer scientist, and Avakian, a startup company specialist, teamed up following the dot-com bubble. Avakian first came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. Lindwasser is a Frenchman who moved to the U.S. in 1997.  He is a former management consultant. Avakian's father, Yuri, holds multiple wind and solar technology patents.
  The original 900-square-foot (84 m²) cafe for Argo Tea, which had 24 indoor seats and 20 patio seats in its 2003 configuration, is located at 958 West Armitage Avenue on the corner of Sheffield Avenue in Chicago. The venture, which opened in June 2003, was the first tea cafe in Lincoln Park. It was across the street from a Starbucks. Argo borrowed its name from the story of Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. The original store was financed by its founders, who were all experienced management consultants, without outside investors.  They used their own credit cards as lines of credit. Chicago architect Mark A. Cuellar was hired to design Argo's early cafe interiors.
  At first, the company experimented with expansion by distributing boxed dry tea at Whole Foods, but quickly restrategized. Barely six months after opening, Argo was planning expansion in Chicago and beyond. Late in 2004, Argo signed a lease to make its first expansion beyond its original location (at Loyola University in the Near North Side community area on Rush Street). By the beginning of 2006, there was a third location (in the Loop community area on Randolph Street near State) with a fourth on the way. In March 2006, Argo expanded to the South Side of Chicago at the University of Chicago Medical Center, which is located in the Hyde Park community area, with a location that is described as a teaosk, a themed kiosk. By 2007, the company decided to pursue consistency across its locations and began a centralized concentrate brewing process. After five years, the franchise had 10 locations ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 square feet (93 to 186 m²), all in Chicago.  In Chicago, several of the early cafes, including the 11th inside Merchandise Mart and the 13th at O'Hare International Airport, have been located in close proximity to a Starbucks storefronts with the thought that Starbucks is expanding demand for tea. By February 2009, the company was still a Chicago metropolitan area business with all 13 of its locations. In July 2011, Argo became the first outside retail tenant of the Tribune Tower in six years when it leased space.
  Argo opened its flagship New York City location in January 2010 by signing a 10-year lease in the Flatiron Building. It promptly followed with a Chelsea neighborhood storefront and then a Columbus Circle store in the spring. It opened a total of four cafes in New York City in 2010, taking advantage of the late-2000s recession, which allowed the company to procure prime retail locations such as Union Square, Columbus Circle and the Flatiron District at reasonable rates. The business replaced a Dean & Deluca in the Union Square neighborhood. Among the investors in the New York City expansion were Sam Zell, Glen Tullman and Oxford Capital. In May 2011, the company added its fifth tea room in New York City.
  By 2010, the company eschewed its aspiration to be the Starbucks of tea, "Starbucks is more like Windows PC—it's old, less healthy and designed for everyone—and we want to be more like Mac: young, healthy, cool and a more unique, innovative brand." Avakian said the company hopes to build the Apple of tea. At the time, it was opening its 18th store (14 in Chicago and 4 in New York) and had $10 million in annual sales, making it the largest chain focused on tea, according to Technomic Inc.
  In 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle credited Argo as being the company that caused the 21st century tea shop revolution, while
caption: Employees passing out drink samples at the current headquarters
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