f you don’t recognize the red bow tie synonymously linked with the coolest tea shop in town then chances are you’ve been living under the proverbial Brampton rock. But no more we say! We’re about to liberate you. Sporting a variety of delicious tea and baked goods to boot, T By Daniel has been sprinkling little bits of awesome Brampton all over town since their opening a little over a year ago.
But the story is so much more than an awesome little shop, with amazing tea, the best customer experience and darling owners. It’s about two trailblazers who have forever changed Brampton’s business landscape.
T By Daniel is the start of something awesome in this city; young entrepreneurs putting themselves out there, taking that leap of faith and actually staying here to start their businesses. It’s not a secret that many people looking to start a business, wanting to do something cool or innovative, are waiting for their chance to be sprung out of Brampton. There’s a huge issue with smart, talented, innovative people leaving this city for what they consider to be greener pastures. But where does that leave Brampton? What does the future of the city look like if we can’t captivate young talented people enough to make them stay? We need these people, but if we want to keep them we’ve got to give them a reason to stay.
T By Daniel is one piece of the puzzle that’s steering Brampton in a better direction. Many little pieces of this puzzle are working to make Brampton a more cutting edge, innovative place to be a young professional, entrepreneur and resident. With the opening of Lab B, Brampton’s first co-working space, the implementation of Fuse Brampton and with more conversation at the city about youth entrepreneurship, social enterprises, creative economy and incubation, it’s becoming more evident that attitudes are shifting. Brampton is starting to embrace the ideas and practices found in more resource rich. entrepreneurial cities.
“The current scene for young entrepreneurs in Brampton is a wide open door yelling “Come on in!” The opportunities, especially in the Downtown Brampton area are great. The city is changing, with lots of potential for growth in the near future. There’s a lot of vacant spaces, waiting to be filled with innovative ideas, and a lot of people, wandering around looking for somewhere to go,” says Daniel.
Daniel and his wife Renata have already harnessed the resources and potential that Brampton has to offer and is a stellar example of the type of business Brampton needs to earn some much-needed cool points. In the past few years, the city has ramped up initiatives to support young entrepreneurs, including additional resources at the Brampton Entrepreneur Centre geared towards youth. The city continues to offer it’s summer company program which offers students resources and seed money to start a business over the summer and has recently integrated the Starter Company to offer similar resources to young people not in school. The community also received seed money last year through Ontario Trillium Foundation to build an ecosystem for young social entrepreneurs in the city, as a result the Fuse program came to be. Fuse has further sparked conversation about the need for resources to assist young people in building viable businesses and encouraging entrepreneurship. Not only this, but they’ve actively assisted young people in their journeys to building their social enterprises.
T By D has taken Brampton leaps and bounds towards making it a cooler place to live, work and run a business. There’s an opportunity for the young people living here to contribute to shaping the city into what we want.
One of the most intriguing things to see in the T By Daniel journey is the willingness of the local community to support local businesses. So many Bramptonians are talking about the little tea shop on Main street, bringing their friends, telling their co-workers and are actually making the effort to go downtown to enjoy what they have to offer. This is kind of a new phenom in the city. Downtown is often seen as out-of-the-way or inconvenient, but on any given day you’ll see a barrage of customers new and returning coming to enjoy a delicious cup of Lion Chai, and even bringing their friends, kids and girlfriends along. This is proof that when Bramptonians discover a hidden gem in this city, they’re ready and willing to support to heck out of it.
The excitement that this little tea shop has generated needs to trickle into other parts of our city, and it will so long as we strive to build things that are worth getting excited over. As far as we can tell, Brampton is a blank canvas waiting to be painted on, T By Daniel has painted one of the first strokes and it’s up to us to keep the momentum and allow it to propel us forward into building a future Brampton that has a little more cool in it’s whip.
Cheers to T By Daniel, to one year of kickin’ it in Brampton and to making the city infinitely cooler! If you haven’t checked them out, you’d better run there and grab a Lion Chai and a Brookie, you won’t be sorry. T By D is located at 46 Main Street North in Downtown Brampton. If you’d like to know more about their journey,, check out their segment on Global News.
