Founded in Dundee in 1884 by trader and shipper James Aimer, this private-label manufacturer has blended, roasted and packed coffee and tea from Faraday Street for over 125 years, supplying catering and trade customers across the UK and Europe through Fair Trade sourcing.
Best for Private-label coffee and tea manufacturer trading in Dundee since 1884, blending
Aimers, trading as James Aimer Ltd, was founded in Dundee in 1884 by trader and shipper James Aimer and has run continuously from the city for well over a century since - the company itself dates its current operation to more than 125 years of blending, roasting and packing coffee and tea. Today the business runs from Faraday Street in Dundee as a private-label manufacturer, supplying its own coffee and tea blends and packaging solutions to catering businesses and trade customers across the UK and Europe rather than selling primarily to walk-in retail. Fair Trade sourcing sits at the center of its supply chain, and the company is listed as a supplier through the Scottish Fair Trade movement, tracing its beans and leaf through to the finished, packed product for the businesses it supplies. It is a working roastery and blending house first, built for the trade side of the coffee and tea business rather than a cafe counter - closer in kind to a regional supplier that other cafes, hotels and caterers put their own name on than to a retail tea shop, with more than 140 years of continuous operation from the same city behind it.
Trading from 52 Old Compton Street in Soho since 1887, Algerian Coffee Stores roasts single-origin coffees from Central and South America, India, Africa and Indonesia on site, alongside house blends and specialty teas.
Best for 137 years of single-origin coffee roasting and specialty tea from the same
Algerian Coffee Stores has traded from the same address, 52 Old Compton Street in Soho, since 1887, putting it among the oldest continuously operating specialty shops on a London high street that has changed character many times over in the intervening century and a half. The current range runs through single-origin coffees from Central and South America, India, Africa and Indonesia, sold alongside the shop's own house blends, and a tea selection that stretches from everyday varieties to specialty and harder-to-find lots sourced from small growing regions. Beyond the two core categories, the shop carries specialty confectionery and cocoa products, plus domestic coffee makers and brewing accessories for anyone setting up at home. The business has stayed in the hands of the same family across multiple generations, and the roasting still happens on-site rather than through an outside supplier, which is a large part of what has kept regulars coming back to one shopfront rather than a chain with multiple branches. Now well past its 137th year in Soho, the shop runs an online store and newsletter alongside the physical counter, extending a nineteenth-century retail model - small-batch roasting, direct relationships with regulars, sourcing from small corners of the world rather than mass suppliers - into a modern retail footprint without changing the format underneath it.
Bakoel Koffie has roasted coffee since 1878 from a colonial-era shop in Jakarta's historic Menteng district. A newer Bintaro location, designed by architect Andra Matin, adds a tropical minimalist café built around vertical greenery.
Best for Jakarta coffee roasted since 1878
Bakoel Koffie's own marketing claims 150 years of coffee-roasting expertise, which lines up with a stated 1878 founding and makes it one of the older continuously operating coffee businesses in Jakarta. The original Cikini café occupies a colonial-era shop building in the historic Menteng district, next to the Taman Ismail Marzuki performing arts center — a location that ties the business physically to Jakarta's colonial-era commercial architecture rather than a generic modern café buildout. A second, newer location in Bintaro Sektor 7, Tangerang Selatan, was designed by Andra Matin, a named Indonesian architect, around a tropical minimalist aesthetic with vertical greenery and what the company calls an "under the tree" concept — a deliberate contrast to the heritage building housing the original café. The Bintaro location also runs activity-based programming, including traditional games and yoga sessions, positioning it as a gathering space rather than a pure coffee counter. Both locations lean on the same description of the clientele: a mix of artists, writers, diplomats, students, and professionals the company calls a "melting pot." For a visitor choosing between them, the split is straightforward — colonial-era architecture and history at Cikini, or an architect-designed, activity-driven space at Bintaro — with the same roasting heritage claimed behind either counter.
Cafés Bozec has roasted coffee in Brest since 1897, one of Brittany's oldest independent torréfacteurs, family-run since 1980. Its specialty-grade lots, rated 80-plus by the Specialty Coffee Association, span house blends, terroir coffees and limited micro-lots.
Best for 80-plus-rated specialty microlots roasted on-site
Cafés Bozec has roots in Brest dating to 1897, making it one of Brittany's oldest independent torréfacteurs, though the business describes itself as family-operated in its current form since 1980 — a continuity across two distinct eras of the same roasting house. The roastery holds itself to a specific, verifiable bar: its specialty coffees are rated 80 or above by the Specialty Coffee Association, the industry's standard cupping-score threshold for what counts as specialty grade rather than commercial-grade coffee.
Three tiers structure the offering — balanced house blends crafted by the in-house roaster, terroir coffees that showcase single origins from major producing regions, and limited micro-lots for drinkers chasing something rarer. All of it is described as roasted artisanally, "torréfaction artisanale," with each coffee treated individually rather than run through a single fixed profile, and beans are sourced exclusively from producers the roastery describes as sustainability-minded, working under stable pricing arrangements rather than spot-market buying.
Three Brest locations carry the roastery's name today: the original retail shop on rue Jean-Jaurès, plus two coffee shops at Village Saint-Louis and the Ateliers des Capucins, where baristas walk customers through tastings — turning a 19th-century roasting house into a still-active, still-tasting-forward presence in the city more than 125 years after it opened.
Paris’s 1880 roaster — Rue Saint-Honoré’s original specialty coffee, pre-wave by a century.
Best for Paris’s 1880 roaster — Rue Saint-Honoré’s original specialty coffee
Verlet's own site dates the business to 1880 at its original address, 256 Rue Saint-Honoré, describing itself as the oldest house to master artisanal roasting in Paris — 'la plus ancienne maison à maîtriser une torréfaction artisanale.' The roasting itself now happens a short distance away, at 27 Rue de Montpensier behind the Palais Royal gardens, where the company says beans are roasted according to their individual character and the day's weather rather than on a fixed cycle: 'les grains sont cuits à cœur en fonction de leur nature et du temps qu'il fait.' The Saint-Honoré address retains a historic tasting salon, and the shop specializes in single-origin coffees — 'cafés de pure origine' — sold alongside curated teas, honey, jam, chocolate, and biscuits. Verlet predates the current wave of Paris specialty roasters by more than a century, and unlike newer entrants built around direct-trade sourcing narratives, its distinguishing claim is continuity of place and craft: the same neighborhood, an artisanal roasting method unchanged in principle since the nineteenth century, and a tasting room still open in the original building rather than relocated or franchised.
Caffè Cagliari has roasted coffee under one family's direction since Ambrogio Cagliari's 1895 Brazil sourcing trip and its 1909 Modena shop. It roasts origins separately, selling beans, ground coffee and capsules through its own shop.
Best for It roasts origins separately, selling beans
Caffè Cagliari's history begins in 1895, when Ambrogio Cagliari traveled to Brazil to source coffee directly at origin -- a starting point the company still cites on its own site. The family opened its first Modena shop in 1909, and the business has stayed under the same family's direction ever since, now spanning more than a century of continuous ownership.
The roastery's defining technique is separating rather than blending at the point of roasting: origins are selected and roasted individually -- "selezione delle origini e la tostatura separata" -- before being combined into finished blends, a method the company treats as central to its identity rather than a footnote. That approach carries through its current range, from the professional-grade HQ (Alta Qualità) line aimed at bars and restaurants to its Miscele in Grani whole-bean blends, Capsule Sistema 10+ pods, and ground coffees formulated separately for moka pot and espresso machine preparation.
Based on Via Emilia Est in Modena, Caffè Cagliari sells directly through its own online shop alongside its wholesale bar-and-restaurant business -- the same split between professional and home markets that has defined the company since Ambrogio Cagliari's original Brazil sourcing trip.
Italy's oldest coffee-roasting company, founded in 1882 by Domenico Vergnano in Chieri, near Turin; his son acquired Kenya's first Italian-owned coffee farm in 1930, and the business is now led by the fourth generation.
Best for 1882 Piedmont blends, still slow-roasted through four generations of one family.
Caffè Vergnano's own site dates the company to 1882 and frames it as a family business now in its fourth generation, still headquartered in Piedmont. The company describes its method as slow, traditional roasting — 'una tostatura lenta e tradizionale' — applied to carefully selected raw materials rather than a fast industrial cycle, and positions quality as non-negotiable: 'Qualità senza compromessi.' From that Turin base, Vergnano has expanded into more than ninety countries and operates upward of two hundred branded cafés worldwide, an unusually large retail footprint for a roaster whose identity still leans on nineteenth-century Torinese tradition. The brand also runs Women in Coffee, a social-sustainability program launched in 2018 that supports women in coffee-growing regions — a rare instance of an Italian heritage roaster attaching itself formally to origin-side development work rather than only marketing its blends. The throughline on the site is ritual: coffee framed less as a commodity than as, in the company's words, a special moment worth generations of continuity. For a shopper, that translates into blends built around consistency across a century and a half rather than single-origin novelty — the reliable, familiar Torinese espresso rather than an experimental one.
Compagnie & Co, which describes itself as the oldest French tea brand, was founded in Paris in 1848 by the Meric family as a chocolate importer before pivoting to tea, and sells loose-leaf and bagged teas, rooibos and herbal infusions blended in France, including steam-aromatised and organic-certified ranges.
Best for French tea blends from an 1848 house in black-and-gold tins
Compagnie Coloniale traces to 1848 in Paris, founded by the Méric family and generally cited as France's oldest tea brand. It began as an importer and distributor of chocolate before shifting its focus to tea, opening its first boutique at 19 avenue de l'Opéra - an address that stayed the brand's emblematic shop for years - and inaugurating its first factory on rue Lesueur, near the Arc de Triomphe, in 1850, an operation that at its height employed some 450 people. The house built its identity on a marine-anchor logo and black-and-gold striped tin boxes that are still recognizable today, and it renamed itself Compagnie & Co in 2022 while keeping the historic mark. The current range runs to loose-leaf and bagged teas, rooibos and herbal infusions, all blended and packaged in France, spanning green, black and white teas, matcha, and accessories, with a steam-aromatised range and organic-certified blends alongside the core catalogue. For a house closing in on 180 years, the through-line is continuity of place and symbol - the same anchor, the same striped tin, carried from an 1848 chocolate importer's storefront near the Opéra to a present-day online shop still selling tea under a name that has changed only once.
Compagnie Coloniale traces its founding to 1848 at 19 Avenue de l'Opéra in Paris, positioning itself as one of France's oldest tea houses, still selling heritage-style blends packaged in its traditional tins.
Best for French tea blends, flavored teas and herbal infusions
Compagnie Coloniale's own account of its history reaches back to 1848, when the house was established at 19 Avenue de l'Opéra in central Paris — a founding date that, if accurate, would put it among the oldest tea merchants still trading in France, predating better-known Paris houses like Mariage Frères (1854) and Betjeman & Barton (1919). The name itself is a period piece: “Compagnie Coloniale” reflects the 19th-century French trade language of the era it was founded in, when tea, coffee and other goods moved through import networks into Paris grocers and specialty houses.
What survives of that history in the current business is the packaging language more than one famous blend — heritage-style tins presented as a through-line back to the house's founding, sold alongside a broader modern tea catalog. Where houses like Mariage Frères or Dammann built their public identity around a signature blend (Marco Polo, Jardin Bleu), Compagnie Coloniale leans more on the claim of seniority itself as the reason to choose it. For a visitor, that makes it a stop less about one particular tea and more about the idea of drinking from a Paris institution that predates the Second Empire.
Cova opened in 1817 as Caffe del Giardino beside La Scala, founded by Antonio Cova; it moved to Via Montenapoleone in 1950 after wartime bomb damage. LVMH acquired the brand in 2013 and expanded it to Hong Kong, Monte Carlo and Paris.
Best for Espresso or afternoon tea
Cova opened in 1817 as Caffe del Giardino, on a corner site -- now Via Manzoni and Via Verdi -- beside Milan's Teatro alla Scala, founded by Antonio Cova as a gathering place for the theatre crowd. Giuseppe Verdi and Giovanni Verga were both regulars, and a bronze scale cast by Bartolomeo Greppi, from the original decor by woodworker Paolo Bossi, is still kept in the shop. Bombing in 1943 damaged the original premises during the Second World War, and in 1950 the business relocated to Via Monte Napoleone 8, inside what would develop into Milan's Quadrilatero della moda fashion district -- the address that gives the shop its current name. Cova was acquired by LVMH in 2013, and has since expanded well beyond the single Milan address it held for over 130 years: a Hong Kong location opened as early as 1993, followed by Monte Carlo in 2017 and Paris in 2021, alongside further outposts in Shanghai, Dubai and Athens. The Montenapoleone flagship still trades on pralines, chocolate and its widely exported panettone, alongside an espresso counter and an afternoon tea service. Two centuries on, the shop that once drew La Scala's opera crowd now sits at the centre of Milan's fashion-week foot traffic instead, still built around the same pastry-and-coffee format.
Coffee shop inside Toronto's 1897 Dineen Building at 140 Yonge Street, opened in 2013 after the heritage-listed building's restoration; named for the Dineen Hat and Fur Company, the original 1897 tenant, and known for its 15-foot ceilings and bronze-and-aluminum detailing.
Best for Hat and fur retailer W&F Dineen
Dineen Coffee Co. opened in spring 2013 at the corner of Yonge and Temperance Streets in downtown Toronto, inside the Dineen Building — built in 1897 for W. and F. Dineen Co., a fur and hat manufacturer, and now a designated Toronto Heritage Property. The café's interior keeps the building's original architectural detailing on display: elaborate crafting on the ceiling and columns, floor-to-ceiling windows, paired with a contemporary addition, a signature red-leather banquette. The company describes its approach as marrying that heritage architecture with "the contemporary Toronto lifestyle" rather than converting the space into a period-piece museum café. Its offerings include espresso drinks, freshly baked croissants, and a retail selection of bagged coffee, serving both a local clientele and visiting tourists drawn to the address. The distinguishing fact here is architectural and datable rather than a general claim of atmosphere: this is a heritage-listed 1897 fur-trade showroom repurposed as a coffee shop, not a newly built space designed to look historic, and the building's heritage status is a matter of public record rather than marketing language.
Brothers Julian and Patrick Alm opened their roastery in 2024, continuing a family trading history that traces back to 1881, and roast green beans sourced through transparent trade relationships in small batches on an energy-efficient Loring roaster. Their coffee is served at two affiliated Konvent cafés in the old town, one in the Aegidienviertel and one near the cathedral, where filter and espresso blends are brewed to order.
Best for Small-batch beans roasted by brothers Julian and Patrick Alm on an energy-efficient
Gion Tsujiri traces its family's Uji tea-growing ties back over 800 years, though the shop dates to 1860 and its Gion storefront to 1948. Its 1978 tea room, Saryo Tsujiri, built the Tsujiri Parfait and other matcha desserts on the same leaf.
Best for Matcha parfaits at Saryo Tsujiri
Gion Tsujiri's own account puts its family's ties to Uji tea cultivation at more than 800 years, but the retail business as it operates today dates to 1860, when Riemon Tsuji I and Tokujiro II founded a tea shop in Uji itself. The third generation opened the Gion storefront in 1948, on Shijo-dori, selling leaf grown and processed in Uji and grinding matcha in-house for both tins to take home and drinks made on site. Thirty years later, in 1978, the fifth generation added Saryo Tsujiri on the shop's second and third floors - described by the family as a tea-drinking dojo, built around the idea that Uji tea could be eaten as much as drunk. That idea became the Tsujiri Parfait, layers of matcha jelly, ice cream, shiratama rice dumplings and sweet azuki bean built around the same matcha the shop sells by the tin, alongside anmitsu, zenzai and seasonal shaved ice on the same menu. The tea room draws crowds on its own terms now, often with a wait, but the shop below still functions as it always has: a Uji tea retailer first, with the dessert operation built directly on top of it rather than run as a separate concept. Few matcha parfaits in Kyoto carry the weight of a tea-growing lineage; here, one is served plated with a spoon.
The Ispahani family's South Asian trading business dates to 1820, but the tea house as it operates today traces to 1934, when Mirza Ahmed Ispahani and his brothers, Mirza Abol Hassan and Mirza Mahmood, formalized their Calcutta trading operation — first opened by their father Mirza Mohammed Ispahani in 1900 — into M.M.
Best for Bangladesh's leading branded tea, grown on the company's own Ghazipore
The Ispahani family's South Asian trading business dates to 1820, but the tea house as it operates today traces to 1934, when Mirza Ahmed Ispahani and his brothers, Mirza Abol Hassan and Mirza Mahmood, formalized their Calcutta trading operation — first opened by their father Mirza Mohammed Ispahani in 1900 — into M.M. Ispahani Limited. The company moved its head office to Chittagong in 1947, where it remains, and has spent the decades since building what is now Bangladesh's largest tea trading business.
That scale rests on four company-owned tea estates — Ghazipore, Mirzapore, Zareen, and Neptune — feeding brands including Mirzapore Best Leaf, Mirzapore Double Chamber Tea Bags, Blender's Choice Premium Tea, and Zareen Premium Tea, sold through a network of 517 sales centers across 25 divisional offices nationwide. By its own account Ispahani holds roughly half of Bangladesh's branded tea market and around 80 percent of the branded tea-bag segment, a dominance that has made it the country's top hot-beverage brand for nine consecutive years running as of 2023.
For a business that started as a general South Asian trading house before tea became its defining product, Ispahani's four estates and century-plus of continuous operation make it the closest thing Bangladesh has to a national tea institution.
The brand dates Keemun black tea to 1875, when Hu Yuanlong adapted southern red-tea methods to Qimen County's leaf and created the smoky, orchid-scented style that became known abroad as the 'queen of black teas'. The site represents the present-day successor to that Qing-dynasty workshop, still processing Qihong-branded black tea from the same Anhui county.
Founded in 1871, Mehmet Efendi still roasts and grinds Turkish coffee at its historic Eminönü shop, now run by the fourth generation of the same family.
Best for Founded in 1871, Mehmet Efendi still roasts and grinds Turkish coffee
Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi has roasted and ground Turkish coffee from the same Eminönü shop since 1871, and the company markets that continuity directly — the current storefront still operates on Tahmis Street, in a building associated with architect Zühtü Başar dating to 1932. Ownership has stayed inside the same family across three and now a fourth generation, a lineage the brand foregrounds in its own materials rather than treating as incidental history.
The product itself hasn't diversified much from the original proposition: finely ground Turkish coffee, roasted and milled to the fine, near-powder consistency Turkish brewing requires, sold from the historic Eminönü location as well as newer branches in Kadıköy and Sirkeci. The company describes itself as the most consumed Turkish coffee brand in the world, a claim built on more than a century and a half of continuous operation rather than recent expansion.
For a brand built almost entirely on unbroken tradition, the two facts that matter are the ones the company repeats most: an 1871 founding date, and a shop that has never left Eminönü in the century and a half since.
Turin coffee dynasty since 1895—espresso roaster and café operator serving Italian coffee traditions across flagship stores, cafés, and retail channels.
Best for Turin espresso, roasted coffee, and Italian café culture since 1895
Lavazza's Milan flagship stands at Piazza San Fedele 2, near the Duomo, rather than the company's broader retail catalog — the site frames it as 'much more than a café,' spanning breakfast through aperitivo hours rather than operating as a standard coffee bar. Its 'Caffetteria' section runs what the flagship calls Coffee Design, coffee-based preparations built around ingredient and format experimentation, and the location also serves Coffeetail, a line of coffee-based cocktails developed in-house by Lavazza. A separate aperitivo program was built in collaboration with the Campari Academy, pairing Lavazza's own coffee identity with Campari's cocktail expertise, while pastry service is handled through an exclusive partnership with chef Marco Pedron. Lavazza itself dates to 1895 in Turin, per the site's own reference to '1895 by Lavazza,' making this Milan address a contemporary flagship built on a nineteenth-century roasting business rather than a standalone café concept. For a visitor, the distinguishing draw isn't the espresso alone — Lavazza sells that everywhere — but the format: a single address built specifically to stage the brand's coffee-cocktail and pastry collaborations rather than just retail its blends.
Opened on Granby Street in 2018, this roaster traces its name to the 1877 Leicester Coffee and Cocoa House Company on the same street. It roasts on a 1kg Probat and hosts the Granby Street Therapists.
Best for Modern 2018 revival of the 1877 Leicester Coffee and Cocoa House Company
The current Leicester Coffee House Company opened its Granby Street coffee shop in October 2018, but frames itself as a direct successor to the original Leicester Coffee and Cocoa House Company, which began on the same street in 1877 with a stated aim of "combining commercial profit with the benefit of townspeople." The modern iteration started even smaller than most home-roasting stories: the founders began roasting on a popcorn maker before upgrading to a small home roaster, and only once the Granby Street shop opened did they acquire a 1kg Probat roaster for commercial-scale batches, which the company still runs "little and often" to keep stock fresh rather than roasting far ahead of demand. The social mission dates to the company's founding too -- it set out from day one to provide supported learning opportunities for young people, reporting "wonderful positive outcomes" before pausing the program during the pandemic as the business focused on survival. Today the shop operates with a staff of four and has taken on an unusual second identity: it hosts the Granby Street Therapists, a small group of independent talking-therapy practitioners, inside the same space. Few coffee shops combine an 1877 lineage claim, a popcorn-maker origin story, and an in-house therapy practice in one address.
Lin Hua Tai is a tea merchant on Chongqing North Road in Taipei's Datong district that serves both retail and wholesale customers. The business dates to 1883, giving it a long commercial history within the city's tea trade. Its retail service allows individual shoppers to buy tea without treating the premises as solely a wholesale supplier.
Best for Tea from a Taipei wholesale and retail merchant
Lin Hua Tai has traded from the same address on Chongqing North Road in Taipei's Datong District since 1883, making it one of the city's oldest continuously operating tea merchants -- by its own account, one of Taipei's oldest tea shops period -- and it has never expanded into a second branch. The range covers the core of Taiwanese oolong: Dong Ding and other high-mountain oolongs, Wenshan Pouchong, and Dongfang Meiren (Oriental Beauty, a white-tipped oolong), alongside green teas like Dragon Well and Green Snail Spring, black teas, tieguanyin and specialty blends, sold loose from large open containers rather than pre-packaged boxes, with prices posted plainly and no push to upsell. The shop's storefront stays deliberately plain, a reflection, by local accounts, of an owner's philosophy that the tea should carry the business rather than the packaging or the shopfront design; the smell of tea leaves fills the space on entry. Staff offer factory tours to interested visitors and serve both wholesale buyers and walk-in retail customers over long daily hours, 7:30am to 9pm. For a shop that has now operated for well over 140 years from one address, the format has stayed close to what a tea merchant looked like in the late Qing and early Japanese-colonial period: bulk leaf, an honest scale, and a single storefront that never chased a second location.
Nakamura Tokichi founded his tea firm on January 1, 1854, on Byobugaura, the river-facing ridge that gave Uji its centuries-old reputation as Japan's foremost matcha-growing district.
Best for Uji matcha and gyokuro from an 1854 house whose 1890
Nakamura Tokichi founded his tea firm on January 1, 1854, on Byobugaura, the river-facing ridge that gave Uji its centuries-old reputation as Japan's foremost matcha-growing district. Tokichi himself had started as an apprentice under the tea master Hoshino Soi around 1840, learning the cultivation and processing methods that Uji's tea houses had refined for generations before he ever opened his own shop.
The business kept innovating well past its founding: in 1913 it patented Japan's first electric matcha grinding method, Patent No. 25028, mechanizing a process that had been done by hand stone mill for centuries. The company has supplied tea for imperial ceremonies for more than 170 years, and its 1890 shop building — representative of a Meiji-era tea merchant's house — is designated in 2009 as part of Uji's Important Cultural Landscape under Japanese national heritage law -- a national, not UNESCO, designation.
Run today by the seventh generation of Tokichi's family, Nakamura Tokichi Honten sells matcha, sencha, and gyokuro alongside a tea-focused menu built around the same leaves. Few Uji houses can point to both an imperial supply record spanning 170 years and a nationally-designated Important Cultural Landscape storefront still doing business on its original site.
Native Coffee Co. runs a specialty espresso bar at 1800 North State Street in Jackson under the tagline 'Quality Coffee. Quality People,' now also serving sister brand Soapbox. It offers online ordering, catering and gift cards alongside its daily bar.
Best for Specialty espresso drinks on North State Street
Native Coffee Co. runs its espresso bar from 1800 North State Street in Jackson under a tagline the shop repeats across its own materials — 'Quality Coffee. Quality People.' — which frames the business around its regulars as much as its menu. The shop keeps weekday hours from 6am, opening an hour later on Saturdays at 7am, a schedule built around commuters and early risers rather than a late-morning café crowd. Alongside its daily espresso bar, Native now also pours for its sister company, Soapbox, run under the same roof — a detail the shop features prominently rather than treating as a footnote, suggesting shared ownership behind both brands. Ordering isn't limited to walk-ins: the shop takes online orders, runs catering, and sells gift cards, positioning itself for offices and events around Jackson as much as counter traffic. There's no public record on the site of a founding date or founder name, and no single named house blend the way some competitors publish — what's clear instead is the format: a State Street espresso bar built for a working schedule, now sharing its space with a second brand under one name. For a specialty espresso stop timed to a workday commute in Jackson, this is that address.
Peixoto Coffee Roasters roasts coffee grown at Fazenda São José da Boa Vista, the family farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil that the Peixoto family has worked since 1894 — more than a century of the same family on the same land before any of it reached Arizona.
Best for Specialty-grade coffee from the Peixoto family farm in Minas Gerais
Peixoto Coffee Roasters roasts coffee grown at Fazenda São José da Boa Vista, the family farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil that the Peixoto family has worked since 1894 — more than a century of the same family on the same land before any of it reached Arizona. Founder Julia Peixoto Peters left a legal career to help import her father's specialty-grade harvest, turning a multigenerational farming operation into a roasting business built around that one farm's coffee.
With locations across Chandler, Gilbert, and Phoenix, Peixoto brings a farm the family has worked since 1894 directly to Arizona retail, run by a founder who chose the family business over a law career to make that connection possible.
A fifth-generation Coorg estate that has processed its own coffee, from cherry to roasted bean, on one lakeside property since 1898. Four lakeview cottages and an on-site café let visitors stay where the coffee is grown.
Best for Single-estate Coorg coffee grown, processed and roasted on one property
On the shore of a lake in Coorg, Riverside Coffee has kept its harvest within sight of where it grows since 1898, a run now in its fifth generation of the same family. The estate calls itself a family heirloom, and the claim shows in how little the operation delegates: cherries are picked, pulped, fermented, dried and roasted without leaving the property, a closed loop the estate sums up simply as 'coffee doesn't leave our premises.' Both Arabica and Robusta are grown here, worked through washed, natural, and honey processing alongside what the estate calls experimental fermentations — a range that lets the same soil produce distinctly different cups. The estate frames its methods as environmentally sustainable, citing ecological balance alongside its workforce as part of what it protects.
Beyond the processing yard, Riverside doubles as a place to stay: four one-bedroom cottages look out over the lake, and an on-site café runs an all-day menu of burgers, pastas, sandwiches, wraps and pizzas alongside the coffee. It's a rare setup for a producer this size — visitors can watch cherry become roasted bean on the same ground where they're staying the night, rather than encountering the estate only as a bag on a shelf.
Ronnefeldt was founded in 1823 by Johann Tobias Ronnefeldt in Frankfurt, developing his knowledge of tea through travels to Rotterdam and London before starting the business at home.
Best for German loose-leaf tea trading since 1823
Ronnefeldt was founded in 1823 by Johann Tobias Ronnefeldt in Frankfurt, developing his knowledge of tea through travels to Rotterdam and London before starting the business at home. His earliest customers were the hotels around Frankfurt frequented by visiting Russian dignitaries, a connection that grew until Johann Tobias became a principal tea supplier to the Russian Tsar's court — tea trading conducted, notably, before the plantation regions of India and Sri Lanka that now dominate the world's supply had even been established.
More than two centuries later, the company still hand-picks by the traditional "two leaves and one bud" standard and runs its retail identity through the Ronnefeldt Brandshop in Frankfurt am Main, alongside a hospitality-focused Tealounge concept it has extended internationally. Its TeaAcademy trains hotel and restaurant staff directly in preparation and service, keeping education tied to the same standards the company sources by.
For a house that was already supplying imperial Russia before today's major tea-growing regions existed, the Frankfurt Brandshop is less a modern retail add-on than the current form of a two-hundred-year continuous trade.
Historic coffee roaster and tea merchant in Zurich's Niederdorf since 1864. Single-origin coffees, rare teas, and their own chocolate confections. The aroma as you approach is intoxicating.
Best for Single-origin coffee, rare teas, and house chocolate confections
Simon Lévelt traces back to 1826, when the merchant it's named for opened a small shop in Amsterdam's old harbor selling coffee and tea brought in from distant trading routes — two centuries of continuous operation, now in its sixth generation of family involvement.
Best for Dutch coffee and tea from a merchant trading since 1826
Simon Lévelt traces back to 1826, when the merchant it's named for opened a small shop in Amsterdam's old harbor selling coffee and tea brought in from distant trading routes — two centuries of continuous operation, now in its sixth generation of family involvement. The company has since centered its production in Haarlem, where it roasts coffee and packs tea, and employs a certified Q-grader on staff to evaluate quality to an internationally standardized protocol.
Today Simon Lévelt carries more than 150 tea varieties alongside some 25 coffees, sold through a network of 40 specialty stores across the Netherlands and Belgium as well as online, with same-day shipping for weekday orders placed before noon. Running coffee and tea as parallel, equally serious specialties — rather than treating one as the other's sideline — is a structure that traces directly back to the original 1826 harbor shop, which sold both from the start.
For a Dutch merchant house old enough to predate most of the countries it now sources tea from, the 40-store footprint across two countries is the modern scale of a business that has never stopped being, at its core, one small harborside shop's original two-product idea.
Trà Đồng Lương traces to the early twentieth century, founded by Phạm Trác Đồng — born 1898, died 1971, a native of Nam Định province — at 44 Rue Richaud in colonial-era Hanoi.
Best for Jasmine and lotus green teas from a three-generation Hanoi tea house
Trà Đồng Lương traces to the early twentieth century, founded by Phạm Trác Đồng — born 1898, died 1971, a native of Nam Định province — at 44 Rue Richaud in colonial-era Hanoi. The name fuses the founder's own name with his home province, a naming convention that ties the brand permanently to the person who built it rather than to a slogan or place invented for marketing.
The house's specialty has stayed narrow and specific across its history: scented green teas, blended with real flowers rather than synthetic flavoring, sold under names like Ngọc Hương, Kim Khánh, Thanh Long, Bạch Hương, and Cẩm Hương. That floral-scenting tradition — jasmine, lotus, and other blossoms folded into green tea leaves — is a defining technique of northern Vietnamese tea culture, and Trà Đồng Lương has built its entire catalog around variations of it rather than diversifying into unrelated tea styles.
Now run by Phạm Kỳ Dương, the third generation of Phạm Trác Đồng's direct descendants, the company still frames its mission around the same commitment to carefully selected, sustainably sourced tea that it was built on. A century-old Hanoi tea name still in family hands, three generations on, is not a common survival story in a city that changed as much as Hanoi did across that century.
David Donde opened Truth in 2012 inside an 1898 Victorian warehouse on Buitenkant Street. Architect Haldane Martin's steampunk design has made it one of the world's best-known cafés.
Best for Steampunk Cape Town roastery in an 1898 Victorian warehouse
David Donde opened Truth Coffee Roasting in 2012 on Buitenkant Street, having taught himself to roast during an earlier career as a hotelier — he'd supply freshly roasted coffee to weekend guests before turning the hobby into a business. The site he chose was an 1898 Victorian warehouse, stripped back during renovation and rebuilt around a steampunk aesthetic designed by architect Haldane Martin.
Martin's brief drew a direct line between the visual complexity of espresso machines and roasters and the Victorian-futurist fantasy of steampunk design: the finished café is dense with saw-blade tabletops, exposed steel plating, black cabling and overstuffed booths, built to look mechanically ornate rather than minimalist. The roasting equipment itself sits in view, part of the design rather than hidden behind a counter.
The combination — Donde's self-taught roasting background paired with Martin's maximalist industrial design — has made Truth one of Cape Town's most internationally written-about cafés, cited repeatedly in design and coffee press for the same reason: it looks like nowhere else serving coffee.
Wang De Chuan traces to 1862, when Wang An Shang crossed from Jinjiang in Fujian and founded the first tea house in Tainan, then the capital of Taiwan. The Taipei flagship moved to Zhongshan North Road at the end of 2012. Oolongs from Lishan, Nantou and Mu Zha sit beside raw and ripe puer from Yunnan. Teaware and gift sets are sold alongside the leaf.
Best for Named-origin Taiwanese oolong and Yunnan puer from an 1862 house.
Wang De Chuan dates itself to 1862, in the reign of the Tongzhi emperor of the Qing dynasty. Wang An Shang crossed the strait from Jinjiang county in Fujian, settled in Taiwan, and founded the first tea house in Tainan, then the capital, in the southwest of the island. The business has stayed in tea since. The Taipei flagship moved from Changchun Road to Zhongshan North Road at the end of 2012. Its design keeps the house mark of black-ink calligraphy on a red ground, and the tea is held in cabinets built to recall traditional library-card drawers. The house sets out its approach as that of the Chinese literati, with every detail researched before it is presented. Guests are given space and time to taste before choosing. The selection is drawn from named places rather than sold as types. Oolongs come from Lishan, Nantou, Mu Zha and Sanxia, and there is a charcoal-roasted Tieguanyin and a honey-fragrance black tea. Puer arrives from Lincang, Baoshan, Xishuangbanna and Yunnan, both raw and ripe. Teaware is sold alongside the leaf, and gift sets are made up in the shop. Tea specialists on the floor have travelled to the producing regions and will talk through what is in the cup. Further branches trade across Taipei and at addresses in Hong Kong and Tokyo.
A fifth-generation Dadaocheng tea factory and shop known for charcoal roasting and Taiwanese tea education. The family business was founded in 1890 and remains in Dadaocheng.
Best for Charcoal-roasted Taiwanese tea and tea education
Whittard of Chelsea began in 1886, when 25-year-old Walter Whittard opened a tea and coffee shop on Fleet Street with a simple operating rule: buy the best.
Best for Loose-leaf tea and coffee from a London house founded in 1886
Whittard of Chelsea began in 1886, when 25-year-old Walter Whittard opened a tea and coffee shop on Fleet Street with a simple operating rule: buy the best. His sons Dick and Hugh took over the business after his death in 1935, and ran it through the Blitz — the original warehouse was destroyed in the December 1940 fires, forcing a move in 1941 to Fulham Road in Chelsea, the address that eventually gave the company its name.
That relocation stuck for decades, and the Chelsea identity has outlasted the original Fleet Street site by nearly a century. In 1999 Whittard opened a flagship on Covent Garden with a tea bar serving afternoon tea on-site, extending a shop that had always sold leaves and beans into a place to sit and drink them.
The company still operates stores across the UK today, still trading as Whittard of Chelsea more than 130 years after a 25-year-old bought his first shopfront on the philosophy that quality, not scale, was the thing worth building around.
Kalman Ze'ev Wissotzky founded his tea trading company in Moscow in 1849, building it within decades into the largest tea firm in the Russian Empire.
Best for Tea-based drinks and vintage-tin decor at T-LAB
Kalman Ze'ev Wissotzky founded his tea trading company in Moscow in 1849, building it within decades into the largest tea firm in the Russian Empire. The 1917 Revolution ended those operations and scattered the family; in 1936, with the situation in Europe darkening, family member Simon (Shimon) Seidler moved to Mandatory Palestine and opened a packing plant there, selling tea to British soldiers stationed in the territory — the start of what would become Wissotzky's Israeli business. His widow, Ida Seidler, later modernized the operation and, in the 1950s, bought the Tel Aviv building on Hashmonaim Street that still serves as company headquarters.
That same building now houses T-LAB, Wissotzky's flagship tea bar, its walls papered in vintage tea-box designs pulled from the company's own factory archive, serving a tea-based drinks menu — iced matcha lavender latte, an Earl Grey "Tiger Boba," a green-tea mojito — that has since expanded to a second branch at Tel Aviv's Azrieli Mall. In June 2023, Israel's Competition Authority formally declared Wissotzky a monopoly, citing over 70 percent market share in green and herbal tea sold to retailers nationally.
Now five generations from its Moscow founding, Wissotzky remains family-owned, running roughly 200 tea blends out of Tel Aviv headquarters and a Galilee factory — Israel's dominant tea house by any regulator's own measure.
Wuyutai has sold tea in Beijing since 1887, when the house first hung out its sign. Its jasmine tea is picked and scented and blended by the house itself. That craft was added to the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2011 and to the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2022. The Wangfujing flagship at 186 Wangfujing Street sells tea and tea sets downstairs with a tea house above.
Best for House-scented jasmine tea, with tea sets and tea ice cream at Wangfujing
Wuyutai was founded in 1887 in Beijing by Wu Xiqing, a tea merchant from Anhui province, during the final decades of the Qing dynasty. The house built its reputation on jasmine tea, and China's Ministry of Commerce later named it one of the country's official Time-Honored Brands in recognition of that history.
What sets Wuyutai's jasmine tea apart is a three-stage process the company calls self-harvesting, self-scenting and self-blending: green tea leaves are picked in tea-growing regions such as Anhui and Zhejiang, then carried to jasmine-growing areas of Fujian to be scented with fresh flowers, before returning to Beijing for final blending. That technique was added to China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2011 and, in 2022, to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list. Beyond the original jasmine blend, the brand has grown into a citywide retail network of shops across Beijing and has extended the same jasmine flavor into products like tea-scented mooncakes and ice cream. For a shop rooted in a single 19th-century recipe, the National and UNESCO recognitions mark a rare case of a commercial jasmine tea blend being treated as intangible cultural heritage in its own right, rather than simply an old product line.
Ying Kee Tea House was founded in 1881 by Chen Chao Ying in Guangzhou, more than a century before Hong Kong became its home.
Best for Pu-erh, oolong and jasmine teas from an 1881 Guangzhou house
Ying Kee Tea House was founded in 1881 by Chen Chao Ying in Guangzhou, more than a century before Hong Kong became its home. The business relocated to Hong Kong in 1950, in the wave of southward migration around the founding of the People's Republic, and has operated there continuously since — now run by the fourth generation of Chen's family, with nine shops spread across Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories.
Over 140 years of continuous trading has come with formal recognition alongside the reputation: Ying Kee holds Hong Kong's Top Brand Mark, ISO9001 certification, and a place in the government's Quality Tourism Services Scheme, plus a Hong Kong Quality Food Award in 2013. The house's range runs across pu-erh, oolong, jasmine, green, and white teas, selected by in-house tea masters, alongside its own teaware.
Few Hong Kong tea houses can point to a founding that predates the city's own status as a British colony's commercial hub by decades — Ying Kee's history began in Guangzhou and only became a Hong Kong story once the family moved the business south in 1950, a relocation now itself 75 years in the past.
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