Venue is ADA accessible.

Parking is free.

Multiple restaurants are located on the premises catering to various dietary needs.

Smoking is only allowed in the actual casino portion of the venue. It should be minimally intrusive as you make your way to the exhibit hall and should not impact anything inside the classrooms or the exhibit hall.

We have 2 blocks of rooms reserved for this event.

One at the venue itself, Ameristar Casino Hotel ($165/night, use code TEA2024) and one at the Holiday Inn KC Northeast ($100/night, about 7-10 minutes drive from the venue).

These blocks of rooms will be reserved until supplies run out or a couple of weeks prior to the event when any unbooked rooms in the blocks will be added back to the hotels' available inventory.

In order to be able to afford a venue and all the other costs associated with putting on an event of this kind, we needed to expand our potential exhibitors as well as attendees.

The Kansas City area has a great local coffee scene as well as tea and chocolate. We hope to bring lovers of all these thing together for an event celebrating them.

In addition, tea, coffee and chocolate have a lot in common. All are impacted by terroir and processing. All have similar tasting processes. Come learn about them all!

Yes. Tickets will go on sale in mid-summer.

You are not just paying to shop. All tickets will be good for 2-Day admission, collectible tasting cup, reusable shopping tote, access to all free lectures and to the free tea bar.

Our ticket prices are set to ensure we can cover our costs and have enough to start paying for the show in 2025.

This event is suitable for children although it is not designed for them. Kids under 10 may not find much to interest them.

There will be room for strollers, though it could be crowded at times.

All children over 10 must have a paid admission. Children under 10 are free but will not receive a tote or tasting cup.

Not all of them.

Lectures are included with admission.

Classes will have more in-depth material, maybe items to take home or taste. These will carry an additional cost to reimburse the instructor for their materials, cover the cost of the room rental and to compensate the instructors a little bit for sharing their knowledge with us.

The Tea Bar is included with admission.

The Deep Dive Tastings will have an additional, small fee to help ensure those who sign up actually attend and don’t just sign up, not show up, and take a spot from someone else.

Afternoon Tea & Coffee will have an additional fee based on the cost for the venue catering to provide the service and foods served. The festival makes nothing from these seatings.

These are 1 hour maximum seatings for tea and coffee with treats and snacks. There will be 2 sessions per day and you may choose from coffee or tea for your seating.

Special dietary restrictions can be accommodated within reason pending discussion with the venue catering.

These sessions will require an additional ticket to cover the additional cost of the catering.

These are 30 minute sessions where you will taste rare teas or coffees, compare types with each other, learn more about a particular type or blend of tea or coffee… whatever the host of the session wants to focus on.

Since there is a large problem with people signing up for these short sessions and then not attending if they are free, these will cost a small additional fee.

This is a space where sponsors and exhibitors can donate teas to be prepared for tasting throughout the day. These may be teas that exhibitors are not sampling at their booths or teas from sponsors who do not have a booth.

The Tea Bar is included with admission.

There will be a Coffee Bar as well but selections will be more limited than with tea.

The event space is large enough, with a high enough ceiling, that you should not have competing scents from coffee or tea or chocolate. We are going to do our best to separate the coffee and tea booths and scatter the chocolate booths among them both to further ensure that no scents from any booth interfere with tastings.

Having attended a Coffee & Chocolate festival as part of the research for this event, we did not notice any aromas at all unless we were directly at the booth in question. There were tea booths as well at this event and the inclusion of all 3 items in one location did not detract from any one item.

We understand your concerns but we feel that this direction is the best future for this event. It speaks to multiple passions within our community and we hope you will be a part of it!