46 stores · curated ORBIS register
Hand-drip coffee accompanies the roasted beans at Bohemian Coffee (Park Ichu), following Park Ichu's move from Seoul to Gangneung. His coffee work began in Seoul in 1988, before the Gangneung operation took shape. Denver's Boyer's Coffee has roasted coffee since 1965, using Diedrich equipment for its production. In Tokyo, Café de l'Ambre occupies a Ginza address associated with Ichiro Sekiguchi and a coffee business founded in 1948.
Wangsan-myeon / Yeongok
Park Ichu, a pioneer of Korean hand-drip coffee, established Bohemian in Gangneung after first roasting at his Seoul shop in 1988. The roastery and cafe sell house-roasted beans and pour classic drip preparations from a hillside setting.
Best for Hand-drip coffee and beans
Denver, Colorado
Roasting in Denver at 5,280 feet since 1965, Boyer's Coffee uses Diedrich roasters and sources only the top 2% of Arabica beans. Its 'School That Coffee Built' program funds schools in coffee-growing regions.
Best for Denver coffee roasted at mile-high altitude since 1965
Boyer's Coffee has roasted in Denver since 1965, and the company frames its own altitude — 5,280 feet — as a functional ingredient rather than trivia: roasting that high, it says, lets the beans cook over a shorter time at lower temperatures, avoiding the scorching that can happen at sea level. The roasts run through Diedrich roasters, and the company sources what it describes as the top 2% of Arabica beans from sustainable farms, avoiding Robusta entirely.
Beyond the bag, Boyer's runs 'The School That Coffee Built,' a program that partners with farming communities to fund school construction, tying each purchase back to the regions the beans are grown in rather than treating sourcing and giving as separate lines of business. The coffee is sold through the company's own café, through grocery partners including King Soopers and Kroger, and online — a distribution footprint that spans a single Denver roastery to national grocery shelves, sixty years after the company started.
For a roaster this old, the product range stays current: whole bean and ground coffee sit alongside Keurig-compatible pods under the Explorer Series and flavored blends, evidence of a company that has kept adapting its format across six decades without moving the roasting operation off its home altitude.
Tokyo / Japan
On a Ginza backstreet, Café de l'Ambre has served coffee and nothing else since 1948, when Ichiro Sekiguchi opened its doors in the lean years after the war.
Best for Vintage aged coffee, decade-cellared before roasting
On a Ginza backstreet, Café de l'Ambre has served coffee and nothing else since 1948, when Ichiro Sekiguchi opened its doors in the lean years after the war. Nearly eighty years on, the cafe still roasts on-site and pulls every cup through hand-sewn cloth drip filters, a method that predates the paper filter's dominance and gives its brews a texture regulars return for.
What sets the house apart is its practice of aging green beans, sometimes for a decade or more, before they ever touch a roaster. The custom traces to Sekiguchi himself: during the postwar bean shortages, he came across a batch of Sumatra Mandheling that had sat unroasted for ten years, roasted it anyway, and found the flavor had changed into something worth pursuing deliberately. What began as necessity became the cafe's signature, and 'vintage coffee' — beans cellared for years under controlled conditions before roasting — is now what Café de l'Ambre is known for among coffee travelers who seek it out specifically.
The menu has never expanded into food or lifestyle retail; it has stayed a coffee-only room for nearly eight decades, run on the same self-roasting, cloth-filter, aged-bean method since Sekiguchi's day. That narrowness of focus is itself the point — one of Tokyo's oldest surviving coffee houses, still doing the one thing it opened to do.
Old Quarter (Hoan Kiem)
Nguyen Van Giang invented egg coffee here in 1946, whisking egg yolk and sugar into a meringue-like cloud when milk was scarce. His family still serves it at three Hanoi locations, including inside Lotte Mall Tay Ho.
Best for Original egg coffee (ca phe trung), invented here in 1946
Cafe Giang's claim to Hanoi's coffee history rests on a specific act of improvisation: in 1946, with fresh milk hard to come by, Nguyen Van Giang began whisking egg yolk and sugar into a meringue-like foam and spooning it over strong Vietnamese coffee, inventing what the city now knows as ca phe trung -- egg coffee. The recipe has stayed in his family since, served at the original shop at 39 Nguyen Huu Huan, reached down a narrow passage off the street in the Hoan Kiem district.
That single address has grown into three. Alongside the original Nguyen Huu Huan location, the family now runs a counter at 57 Trang Tien and a third inside the Lotte Mall Tay Ho shopping center -- a modern setting a long way from the original alley shop, serving the same drink. The company's own framing leans on that continuity rather than expansion for its own sake: its stated mission describes each cup as carrying 'craftsmanship, family memories, perseverance and a spirit passed down through generations.'
For a drink invented as a wartime substitute for milk, egg coffee has outlasted the shortage that created it by nearly eighty years, and Cafe Giang's three Hanoi counters are still the direct line back to Nguyen Van Giang's original recipe.
Taichung / Taiwan
Chun Shui Tang opened on Taichung's Siwei Street on May 20, 1983, under the name Yangxian Tea Shop, founded by Liu Han-Chieh.
Best for Bubble milk tea at the tea house credited with its invention
Chun Shui Tang opened on Taichung's Siwei Street on May 20, 1983, under the name Yangxian Tea Shop, founded by Liu Han-Chieh. Hot tea sold poorly in summer, so Liu began experimenting with cold tea drinks shaken in a cocktail shaker, an idea he traced back to a trip to Japan where he had seen coffee served cold — an unusual pairing of technique and inspiration for a traditional tea shop at the time.
In 1986, during further testing, the shop added tapioca pearls to sweetened milk tea; the drink launched formally in 1987 under the name that stuck: Bubble Tea. Traditional tea sellers initially dismissed Chun Shui Tang as a betrayer of tea culture for the innovation, an accusation that reads very differently now that bubble tea has become one of Taiwan's most recognized cultural exports.
Chun Shui Tang still operates as a full tea house rather than a to-go bubble tea chain, serving loose-leaf tea alongside the drink it is credited with inventing. Being the widely credited birthplace of a beverage now sold on nearly every continent is a rare claim for any single shop to hold, let alone one still doing business under close to its original name.
Madikeri
Trading as Shanthi Coffee Works on College Road in Madikeri, Coorg Origin has graded and roasted plantation coffee as a family business since 1970. It uses only graded plantation beans and also sells Coorg spices, honey and homemade wine.
Best for Plantation coffee graded and roasted since 1970
Coorg Origin trades under the name Shanthi Coffee Works, a family coffee business on College Road in Madikeri that has been grading and roasting plantation coffee since 1970 — more than five decades before the website that now sells it existed. The company describes the operation as a 'family legacy and expertise in the field of Coffee Manufacturing,' built on sourcing only graded plantation coffee beans grown in Coorg's own estates rather than blending in outside stock. Alongside coffee, the shop sells Coorg spices selected and processed to preserve their natural flavour, honey the company describes as pure and additive-free, and homemade wine made to a regional recipe. The emphasis throughout is on continuity with the original 1970s grading-and-roasting operation rather than reinvention: the business frames its current online store as an extension of the same family trade rather than a new venture layered on top of it. It ships its coffee and other Kodagu produce from its Madikeri premises near Ram Mandir, giving buyers outside Coorg direct access to a coffee house whose roasting practice predates India's specialty-coffee movement by a generation.
Bangalore / India
Cothas Coffee has been roasting in Bangalore since 1949, when Sri Krishnaiah Chetty founded the company; it remains run by his family into a third generation.
Best for The 85:15 filter coffee-chicory blend
Cothas Coffee has been roasting in Bangalore since 1949, when Sri Krishnaiah Chetty founded the company; it remains run by his family into a third generation. Cothas is credited as a pioneer of the South Indian 85:15 filter coffee blend — 85 percent coffee to 15 percent chicory — the ratio that defines traditional filter coffee across the region.
The beans come from Karnataka's Kodagu and Chikmagalur estates, two of the state's principal coffee-growing districts, and are roasted on German machinery the company has relied on across its history. Cothas is also credited with introducing the freshness valve to Indian coffee packaging, a change that let roasted coffee release built-up gas without letting in the air that stales it — a packaging detail that mattered as the brand grew beyond strictly local sales.
Three generations in, still sourcing from the same Karnataka estates and still built around the 85:15 blend it helped establish, Cothas remains one of South India's foundational filter coffee houses.
Jackson, Wyoming
Cowboy Coffee Co. has roasted Arabica beans in Jackson since 1989, running its original Town Square Coffee Shop plus a drive-through near Maverick Station. Its bestsellers include Original Cowboy Blend, Organic Teton Blend, Cactus Cowboy Blend and Rustler's Blend.
Best for Original Cowboy Blend roasted in Jackson Hole
Cowboy Coffee Co. has roasted in Jackson Hole since 1989, and 35-plus years later its own materials still frame the coffee around the region's winters rather than a generic quality pitch: 'Winters are long out this way — the coffee has to be up to the task.' The bestselling lineup keeps a consistent Western theme rather than chasing single-origin trends — Original Cowboy Blend, Organic Teton Blend, Cactus Cowboy Blend and Rustler's Blend — alongside an espresso roast and K-cups for anyone brewing at home. The business runs pickup through four points around the valley: the original Town Square Coffee Shop on North Cache Street, a drive-through near Maverick Station, a Teton Village location and a Big Sky outpost, letting online orders route to whichever stop is closest. That's an unusually wide footprint for a roaster of this size, built up gradually rather than opened all at once, and it's kept the company's identity — 'A Taste of the West' — consistent across all four addresses rather than diluting it location by location. For a Jackson Hole coffee stop with three and a half decades behind it and a blend list that hasn't chased trends, Cowboy Coffee is the town-square original the newer roasters get compared to.
Prague / Czech Republic
Dobrá Čajovna's origin sits inside a specific piece of late-Communist Czechoslovakia: in the final years before 1989, a group of young tea drinkers began meeting to sample rare Indian, Chinese and Japanese teas smuggled into the country, at a time when foreign-currency shortages meant high-quality imported tea was effectively restricted to government and military elites.
Best for Indian, Chinese and Japanese teas in a Bohemian-style tearoom
Dobrá Čajovna's origin sits inside a specific piece of late-Communist Czechoslovakia: in the final years before 1989, a group of young tea drinkers began meeting to sample rare Indian, Chinese and Japanese teas smuggled into the country, at a time when foreign-currency shortages meant high-quality imported tea was effectively restricted to government and military elites. After the fall of communism, that group formalized in 1992 as the Society of Tea Devotees, and on June 1, 1993, co-founders Jiří Šimsa and Aleš Jurina opened the first Bohemian-style tearoom in Prague under the Dobrá Čajovna name — the country's first tearoom of its kind.
The concept was built around the tearoom as a gathering place, described in the company's own account as "a shelter, a place for safety, where like-minded individuals could gather and taste the world of tea," served by staff trained in the specific preparation each tea calls for.
From that single 1993 room, the concept has grown to two Prague locations and dozens more across Central and Eastern Europe, but the founding motive — teas once rationed to an elite, made openly available the moment that changed — is still what the name refers back to.
Doi Chang
Doi Chaang's Arabica traces to 1969, when Akha and Lisu farmers in this Chiang Rai village were encouraged to grow coffee as an alternative to opium poppy, with royal backing. The estate still hand-picks and wet-ferments its own cherries.
Best for Single-origin arabica from Doi Chaang village
Coffee growing in Doi Chaang village, in the hills of Chiang Rai province, dates to 1969, when hill-tribe farmers there were encouraged to plant Arabica as an alternative to opium poppy -- a program that carried the backing of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama 9. What began as a crop-substitution effort has become a full estate operation run largely by the Akha and Lisu families who farm the slopes, handling the crop from cherry to cup rather than selling raw beans out to a separate processor. Cherries are hand-picked selectively and wet-fermented on site, a slower and more labor-intensive process than mechanical stripping, and the beans are grown at around 1,200 meters, an altitude that slows ripening and concentrates flavor. The estate sells both washed and honey-processed lots from the same single origin, and various certifications back up its specialty-grade claims. More than fifty years on from a program meant to replace an illegal crop, the village's coffee is now marketed on the coffee's own merits -- balanced acidity, low caffeine, distinct aroma -- rather than on the story of where it came from, even though that story remains unusually well documented for a single-village origin.
9 Burnett Court, Durango, CO
Founded by Carl Rand in 1984, Durango Coffee Company roasts direct-trade single origins from named farms in Costa Rica, Colombia, Guatemala and Brazil. Its Costa Rica Las Lajas SL-28 scored 94 points from Coffee Review.
Best for Direct-trade single-origin coffee, including the Coffee Review-scored 94 Costa Rica Las Lajas
Carl Rand opened Durango Coffee Company in 1984, and the roaster marked its fortieth year in business in May 2024 from its shop at 9 Burnett Court in downtown Durango. The lots it roasts trace to named farms rather than generic co-ops: Las Lajas in Costa Rica, Cafe Granja La Esperanza in Colombia, Fincas La Merced and Retiro del Quisaya in Guatemala, and Fazendas Serrinha and Santa Luzia in Brazil, several sold under direct-trade terms. The Costa Rica Las Lajas SL-28, a lot grown from the SL-28 varietal more commonly associated with East African coffee, scored 94 points from Coffee Review, which noted bright fruit, mango, and a floral scent; a second lot from the same farm, Perla Negra, carries a five-star rating from the same publisher. Alongside the single origins, Durango sells house blends, a dedicated espresso roast, decaf, and subscription programs, and pairs the retail counter with an espresso-equipment shop for home setups. The Durango storefront doubles as a cafe, with sandwiches and baked goods served alongside the coffee, and doors open at 6 a.m. daily. Four decades in, the company still roasts everything on-site rather than through a co-packer, keeping the link between the named farms and the bag on the shelf intact.
Managua / Online
Founded in 1947, the Bendaña McEwan family's Finca El Quetzal grows rare Geisha and Laurina alongside Yellow Catuai in Nicaragua's Matagalpa highlands. Now fourth-generation, it processes washed, shade-grown coffee and ships both roasted and green beans.
Best for Now fourth-generation, it processes washed
Finca El Quetzal sits in the highlands above Matagalpa, Nicaragua, where the Bendaña McEwan family has farmed since 1947. Four generations in, the estate is now run by Ana Bendaña McEwan, daughter of Dr. Frank Bendaña, alongside her husband Justin Sieve, with the family staying involved from planting and picking through drying, grading and export rather than handing the farm off to hired management. What distinguishes the farm is varietal range rather than volume: alongside the workhorse Caturra and Villa Sarchi, El Quetzal grows Geisha and Laurina, two varieties prized for delicacy over yield, plus Java, Pacamara and Yellow Catuai, all grown under shade and processed washed. The company sells both directions of that spectrum, roasted beans for drinking and green beans for roasters, through its own online store, with sample packs and wholesale lots aimed as much at home roasters as at cafes. Roasting itself is contracted to a trusted outside partner, keeping the family's direct involvement concentrated on the farm rather than the roast profile. The business is also in the middle of a domestic push, building presence in St. Louis and the San Francisco Bay Area, evidence of a fourth-generation estate coffee still actively finding new US markets rather than resting on an established one.
Tenom, Sabah, with a cafe in Kota Kinabalu
Fatt Choi Coffee began in Tenom in 1983 under founder Foong Choon Sang, launching its Kopi-O blend in 1986. It now sells instant white coffee and coffee-tea lattes from Tenom and Kota Kinabalu.
Best for Kopi-O and 2-in-1 white coffee rooted in Tenom's coffee heritage
Fatt Choi Coffee started in 1983 as Fatt Choi Sdn Bhd, a beverage distributor founder Foong Choon Sang ran out of Tenom, in Sabah's coffee-growing interior. The Fatt Choi Coffee brand itself followed in 1986 with Kopi-O as its first product — a black, sweetened coffee style that the company says became a staple in homes and shops across Sabah soon after launch. The line grew from there rather than staying a single product: by 1997 the company had added instant coffee blends beyond the original Kopi-O, and today the range includes 2-in-1 instant white coffee and 3-in-1 coffee-and-tea latte mixes sold in bag format. The company ties its identity directly to Tenom's growing conditions and agricultural heritage, positioning itself as a Sabah coffee maker rather than a generic instant-coffee brand. More than four decades on from its start as a distributor, Fatt Choi still runs from Tenom, and has added a cafe in Kota Kinabalu and a hilltop Coffee Cabin retreat, extending a business that began on the back of one local blend into a small regional network.
IFC Central, Harbour City TST, multiple HK locations
Founded in Hong Kong in 1987, Fook Ming Tong blends green, white, oolong, black, dark and floral teas under its own tea masters at shops in ifc mall, Harbour City, Sogo and the airport, pairing them with Yixing and Jingdezhen teaware and tea-tasting appointments.
Best for Traditional Anxi Tie Guan Yin and other tea-master-blended Chinese teas
Founded in 1987, Fook Ming Tong has built its retail footprint around Hong Kong's own high-traffic geography - shops in ifc mall in Central, Ocean Centre at Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui, Sogo in Causeway Bay, and a counter at Hong Kong International Airport - putting the tea in front of both local buyers and travelers passing through. The house sources and blends across six major tea categories - green, white, oolong, black, dark and floral - under its own tea masters' quality control, with particular emphasis on traditional Anxi Tie Guan Yin, sold loose or pressed into cakes for aged dark teas. Seasonal releases such as a 2026 spring collection bring in named varieties like Wuyi Da Hong Pao, Anxi Tie Guan Yin and Shifeng Long Jing. The tea list is paired deliberately with teaware - Yixing purple clay pots and Jingdezhen porcelain - and rounded out with a small line of tea-infused almond cookies, plus curated gift sets aimed at corporate and personal gifting alike. Fook Ming Tong also runs private tea-tasting appointments and wholesale accounts, and ships internationally through its own e-commerce platform, extending a nearly four-decade-old Hong Kong tea business well beyond its four physical counters.
Mission District (Valencia St), San Francisco
A San Francisco Mission District roaster, founded in 2008, that hand-roasts direct-sourced Latin American, Indonesian and East African beans on a 1957 German roaster. It operates two cafes and a stake in The Mill.
Best for Direct-sourced Latin American, Indonesian and East African beans
Four Barrel Coffee, founded in San Francisco's Mission District in 2008, built its identity around a specific kind of stubbornness: the company says it relies on 'highly trained people, not computers' to roast, on what it calls 'a hulking beast of a vintage German roaster' from 1957. That equipment choice runs through the rest of the operation -- Four Barrel says it directly sources almost all of its coffee, spending months of every year traveling to origin in Latin America, Indonesia and East Africa to build relationships with the farmers and mill workers who grow and process it, rather than buying through intermediaries. The company has grown from its original Valencia Street roastery to operate two cafes plus a stake in The Mill, a well-known Divisadero Street bakery-café partnership. Community investment extends past the supply chain, too: Four Barrel has backed a 900-person co-op school project in Ethiopia, one of the countries it sources beans from. The roasting philosophy stays consistent across all of it -- cleanness, sweetness, acidity and complexity in the cup, chased by hand rather than by preset roast curves, on a machine old enough that keeping it running is itself part of the craft the company sells alongside the coffee.
Tehran / Iran
Golestan began in 1950 as a tea trading house founded by Seyed Mohammad Gerami, formally incorporated as a joint stock company under the Golestan name on November 22, 1961.
Best for Assam and Darjeeling tea sourced directly from Indian estates
Golestan began in 1950 as a tea trading house founded by Seyed Mohammad Gerami, formally incorporated as a joint stock company under the Golestan name on November 22, 1961. More than seventy years later it is one of Iran's largest food companies, headquartered in Tehran, but tea remains the business it was built on and the category still most associated with the Golestan name across Iranian households.
The company sources its tea directly from estates in Assam and Darjeeling, India, tying an Iranian household staple to specific South Asian tea-growing regions rather than anonymous bulk imports. Golestan has since expanded well past tea into rice, spices, pistachios, and dozens of other food categories — 20 main product groups and hundreds of individual items by its own count — but the tea trading house Gerami started in 1950 is the origin point the rest of the business grew from.
For a company now selling everything from saffron to lentils, Golestan's tea remains its oldest and most identity-defining product line: a Tehran-headquartered import house that has spent seven decades bringing Assam and Darjeeling tea to Iranian tables.
Millerton / USA
John Harney started what became Harney & Sons in 1983, learning to blend tea from Stanley Mason, the owner of Sarum Teas in Salisbury, Connecticut, and pouring his own early blends for guests at the White Hart Inn before buying Sarum outright and running the business from his own basement.
Best for Over 300 blended and single-origin teas from the family-run house
John Harney started what became Harney & Sons in 1983, learning to blend tea from Stanley Mason, the owner of Sarum Teas in Salisbury, Connecticut, and pouring his own early blends for guests at the White Hart Inn before buying Sarum outright and running the business from his own basement. Four decades on, the company is still family-run — sons Michael and Paul now serve as vice presidents, with a third generation already in the business — and has grown from a handful of original blends to more than three hundred teas.
The tasting room and shop in Millerton, New York, sit beside the company's own factory, giving visitors a rare chance to taste the blends where they're actually made, while a second storefront in SoHo brings the same range into Manhattan. Harney also holds Fair Trade certification on a portion of its range and partners with 1% for the Planet, donating a share of sales to environmental causes.
Few American tea houses can claim this direct a line from a single founder's basement operation to a nationally distributed brand still run by his own family.
Asheville
High Noon Coffee, a small-batch, woman-owned roastery in Asheville, roasts on a 1987 vintage Probat L12 retrofitted for third-wave roasting. It sells pour-over, espresso blends, Sumatra, decaf espresso, and cold brew coffee, with retail pickup and wholesale supply.
Best for Small batch third wave roasted coffee
Vienna
Jonas Reindl roasts in 10kg-max batches at its Westbahnstrasse roastery, including a direct-traded Nicaraguan house espresso, across four Vienna cafe locations. The name nods to the nearby Schottentor hub, nicknamed 'Jonas' Pan' since 1961.
Best for Vienna's Schottentor hub nicknamed 'Jonas' Pan' since 1961
Jonas Reindl roasts out of Westbahnstrasse 13 in Vienna's 7th district, in batches capped at 10kg -- a limit the roastery explains directly: 'we roast small batches (10kg max) because we have better control over all the parameters that impact the flavour profile.' The house espresso, a Nicaraguan lot, is bought 'directly traded without any middle-men,' and the roastery says it demands full transparency even when it does work through wholesalers for other origins. Named single-origin coffees rotate through the lineup -- Misty Mountain from Nicaragua, Karamo Mimosa from Ethiopia, Fazenda Praline from Brazil -- priced individually rather than sold only as house blends, alongside a decaf and dedicated filter roasts. Four cafe locations extend the roastery across Vienna's 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 9th districts. The name itself carries a piece of city trivia: Schottentor, the transport hub built under Mayor Franz Jonas in 1961, earned the nickname 'Jonas Reindl' -- Jonas' Pan -- from locals for its pan-like shape, and the roastery borrowed the nickname rather than inventing a new name from scratch. The stated philosophy is 'craftsmanship over ease and quality over convenience,' applied, per the roastery, to every stage from cultivation through the final brew rather than only to the roasting step itself.
Kadanur (Madikeri-Virajpet Rd)
Kallucoppa is a micro-roastery on the Madikeri-Virajpet road at Kadanur, hand-roasting single-origin coffee from more than 350 acres of shade-grown estates the family has worked since 1980. Alongside coffee the shop sells estate tea and spices, and hosts plantation tours and tastings for visitors.
Best for Micro-roasted single-origin estate coffee
Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan
Kanbayashi Kanazawa Chaho inherited its name from a historic Kyoto Uji tea merchant family when it opened in 1949. It sources matcha, sencha and gyokuro from Uji, roasts kaga-bocha, and grows its own black tea on Noto Island.
Best for Yoshihashi wagashi at a Kanazawa tea house, plus house-grown Noto black tea
Kanbayashi Kanazawa Chaho carries the name of Kanbayashi, one of Kyoto's historic Uji tea merchant families, inherited when the Kanazawa shop opened in 1949 with ties to the Maeda clan's Kaga Domain, which had its own long tradition of promoting tea culture in the region. The shop still sources its core matcha, sencha and gyokuro from Uji, and blends in kaga-bocha, a roasted tea associated with the region, alongside more everyday tea for local use. Its main store sits deliberately between two of Kanazawa's main draws - Omicho Market and the Higashi Chaya geisha district - and doubles as a tea house and cafe, serving tea alongside wagashi supplied by the local confectioner Yoshihashi rather than made in-house. Beyond retail and Uji sourcing, the company has grown its own leaf for roughly a decade: a tea plantation on Noto Island in Nanao Bay, near Nanao City, where it produces black tea rather than importing it. That combination - a historic Kyoto merchant name, Uji-sourced green tea, and a smaller home-grown black tea program up on the Noto Peninsula - spans three shops across Ishikawa Prefecture, giving the business both an inherited pedigree and a genuinely local growing operation to back it up.
Naples / Online
Naples espresso roaster founded by the Rubino brothers, who began roasting coffee in their father's bakery in the 1950s; the Kimbo name and red-tin branding date to 1971.
Best for Neapolitan espresso, roasted coffee, and classic Kimbo blends
Kimbo's own site anchors its identity to a single blend, the Antica Miscela, dated to 1963 and still sold in the brand's recognizable red tin — the company's own tagline calls it 'the coffee of Naples.' The business is run by the Rubino family, referenced on the site via a dedicated 'family story' page, and operates from Via Bernini in Naples. Kimbo frames quality control as starting at sourcing — 'la qualità inizia dalla scelta delle materie prime,' quality begins with the choice of raw materials — and extends that positioning through Sapiente, a specialty-grade line marketed under the label 'Master Roasters from Napoli,' distinct from the mainstream bar blends. The catalog spans whole bean, ground, moka-format, and capsule coffee compatible with multiple machine systems, plus compostable pod options. What separates Kimbo from Naples' many café-facing roasters is scale paired with a fixed identity: rather than diversifying into unrelated categories, the company has stayed inside one city's dark-roast bar tradition for six decades, selling the same red-tin blend that supplies much of the city's own espresso bars.
Ulee Kareng, Banda Aceh
An Acehnese coffee brand roasting and packaging Ulee Kareng coffee since 1960, exported as far as Europe, Australia and Mecca. It was featured in a 2016 Wonderful Indonesia showcase in Stockholm.
Best for Acehnese coffee brand roasting and packaging Ulee Kareng coffee since 1960
Kopi Ulee Kareng brands itself simply as 'Ulee Kareng Coffee Since 1960,' tying its packaged retail line directly to the highland district and roasting tradition that gives Aceh's coffee its name. The company built its mission around elevating Gayo and Ulee Kareng coffee beyond the local coffee-shop tradition and into an exportable, shelf-stable product -- a different proposition from the sock-filtered cups served fresh at Ulee Kareng's older coffee houses. That export ambition has paid off literally: the brand ships to Australia, Malaysia, Germany, Thailand and Singapore, and, notably, to Mecca, where Acehnese pilgrims and expatriates make up a reliable market for coffee from home. In 2016, the brand's profile jumped further when it was featured in 'Wonderful Indonesia: Showcasing Aceh's Traditional Heritage,' an event held in Stockholm to introduce Scandinavian audiences to Acehnese coffee culture specifically. Where many of Banda Aceh's coffee names are built around a single physical shop and its regulars, Kopi Ulee Kareng has taken the opposite route -- packaging the same roast and grind tradition for retail and international shipping, betting that the flavor built for local coffee-shop pours can travel just as well sealed in a bag as poured fresh from a sock filter.
5 rue Noel Ballay, Chartres
Roasting in Chartres since 1959 and under the Herbe family since 1999, La Brulerie Chartraine sells daily-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea and local confectionery like mentchikoffs, with a second Bonville roasting shop added in 2023.
Best for Daily-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea and local confectionery like mentchikoffs
La Brulerie Chartraine has operated in Chartres since 1959, originally from a shop at 5 rue Noel Ballay in the city center. Christophe Herbe's parents took over the roastery in 1999, and the family kept it at the same downtown address for more than two decades before Christophe opened a second location in March 2023, a purpose-built workshop at Parc de l'Equerre in nearby Bonville (Gellainville) designed to be more spacious and easier to access than the historic shop.
Both locations roast daily, working with green coffee sourced directly from producers across Latin America, Africa and beyond. Alongside the coffee, the shop sells loose-leaf teas including house-made blends that reference Chartres's own local heritage, plus chocolates, biscuits, honey, jams and nougat. One local specialty stands out on the shelf: mentchikoffs, a pralined candy particular to the region. Two roasting sites, more than 65 years under one name, and a shop-floor mix of daily-roasted coffee, tea and regional confectionery make La Brulerie Chartraine less a single-product roaster than a small grocery built around what its own ovens and roasters produce fresh each day.
Los Gatos
Roasting coffee since 1982, this Los Gatos shop doubles as a gathering place with local mountain wines and live music Thursday through Saturday. Beans, teas and cocoa ship online or sell in-store.
Best for House-roasted coffee, local wine and live music
Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company has sourced and roasted coffee since 1982, by its own account, making it one of the longer-running independent roasters still operating from its original line of business — sourcing and roasting rather than just brewing. Beyond the roasted beans, teas and cocoa sold both in-store and through its own e-commerce site, the shop functions as a gathering place: local mountain wines and craft beers are poured alongside the coffee menu, and the space hosts live music Thursday through Saturday evenings from seven to nine. Seating spreads across an indoor room, sidewalk tables, and a dedicated parklet, and online orders can ship via UPS or the Post Office, or get picked up in-store for free. What's clearly documented is the 1982 start date and the wine-and-live-music format layered onto the roastery.
Olivioğlu Sokak, Beyoğlu, Istanbul
A ten-square-meter Turkish coffee shop off İstiklal, brewing since 1967. Third-generation owner Can Özmen still uses copper pots for the thick, foam-topped coffee.
Best for Thick Turkish coffee since 1967
Mandabatmaz opened in 1967 in a passage just off İstiklal Caddesi, in a shop small enough that regulars describe it in single-digit square meters. The name is a piece of Turkish wordplay — it means roughly "the water buffalo won't sink," a joking way of saying the coffee is thick enough to hold weight.
Can Özmen, who took the shop over from his parents, still brews with copper pots rather than the electric warmers most competitors switched to decades ago — a deliberate holdout that regulars credit for the coffee's texture. The köpük, the dense foam on top, is the traditional measure of whether Turkish coffee has been made correctly, and Mandabatmaz's version is what other İstiklal shops get compared against. Turkish coffee itself was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013, formal recognition of a preparation method Mandabatmaz has been practicing, largely unchanged, since long before that listing existed.
Florence / Italy
Mokaflor was founded in 1950 by Vasco Bernini, a former accountant who moved into roasting and built a company now in its third generation of family ownership.
Best for Slow 15-20 minute discontinuous-drum roasts tuned per coffee variety
Mokaflor was founded in 1950 by Vasco Bernini, a former accountant who moved into roasting and built a company now in its third generation of family ownership. Bernini's founding choice ran against the postwar Italian trend toward thick crema and heavy Robusta content, roasting styles built for volume and a particular textural signature rather than for variety-specific flavor.
Mokaflor's alternative was a slow discontinuous-drum roast, taking 15 to 20 minutes per batch and tuned separately for each variety rather than applying one profile across the board — a far longer and more deliberate process than the fast, high-volume roasting the market was moving toward at the time. That founding decision has carried through three generations of the same family running the company, meaning the current roasting approach is a continuation of Bernini's original break from convention rather than a later rebrand.
In a city and country where dark, fast-roasted, Robusta-heavy espresso became the default, Mokaflor's 15-to-20-minute discontinuous-drum process is a seven-decade-old counter-argument still being roasted out today.
London / Covent Garden / Borough
London's first specialty roaster, opened on Monmouth Street in 1978 by Nicholas Saunders and Anita Le Roy. Three sites now, and still no laptops.
Best for Single-origin coffee roasted since 1978, three London sites, still no laptops.
Monmouth Coffee Company opened in 1978 at 27 Monmouth Street in Covent Garden, founded by Nicholas Saunders and Anita Le Roy. They roasted in the shop's basement on old direct-flame machines — a small UNO first, then a 1930s Whitmee — years before "third wave" was a term anyone used in London.
The company joined Borough Market in the late 1990s, among the first specialty traders there, and its arrival helped pull both Borough Market and Neal's Yard back from decline. Today Monmouth runs three sites: the original Monmouth Street shop, a counter at 2 Park Street next to Borough Market, and a roastery in Bermondsey on Dockley Road.
The house rule hasn't changed: no laptops. Monmouth sells beans and pours coffee — nothing else competes for counter space or attention. For a shop credited with laying the groundwork for London's post-2000 coffee scene, the format has stayed almost defiantly simple: single-origin beans, black-and-white price boards, and a queue that starts before opening.
Jeju Island, South Korea
Founded in 1979 by Suh Sung-hwan, O'sulloc farms the Dolsongi, Seogwang and Hannam estates on Jeju's volcanic soil, USDA and IFOAM organic certified since 2010. Its teas have taken prizes at international competitions in Beijing and Japan, including a 1999 Beijing prize recorded in O'sulloc's history.
Best for Jeju volcanic-soil green tea from three organic estates
O'sulloc traces to 1979, when Suh Sung-hwan — who also founded the wider AmorePacific Group — set out to revive Korean tea culture by developing tea fields on Jeju Island's volcanic soil, starting with the Dolsongi field before adding the Seogwang and Hannam estates. Seogwang, once barren land turned into an organic plantation, carries its own historical footnote as the exile home of the calligrapher Kim Jeong-hui; Hannam, in Seogwipo, runs both green and black tea production out of a modern factory built for roughly 646 tons of annual output. The company launched its Sulloc-Cha tea brand in 1980 and opened the O'sulloc Tea Museum on Jeju in 2001, letting visitors walk the tea fields and see production up close rather than encountering the brand only through packaged retail. O'sulloc's fields earned USDA National Organic Program and IFOAM organic certification in 2010, and the company has entered — and been recognized at — major international tea competitions in Beijing and Japan. O'sulloc became a wholly owned, independently structured AmorePacific subsidiary in 2020, decades after starting as one founder's attempt to rebuild a tea-growing tradition that had largely disappeared from Jeju.
Paris / Multiple
Founded in 1986 by François-Xavier Delmas and a group of friends, Palais des Thés built its identity on visiting tea gardens directly rather than buying through brokers, and now runs more than 150 shops worldwide.
Best for Terroir-sourced teas from François-Xavier Delmas
Palais des Thés was founded in 1986 by François-Xavier Delmas, alongside a group of around 40 friends, at a moment when the Paris tea trade was dominated by long-established family houses. Delmas's approach was to source differently rather than compete on heritage he didn't have: growing up around wine culture gave him an early feel for terroir — how a specific patch of land and its handling shape flavor — and he applied that thinking to tea by traveling directly to producing regions rather than buying through importers.
Over roughly three decades he built relationships across tea-growing areas in Asia, Africa and South America, working alongside the farmers and producers themselves to understand regional techniques and quality at the source. That direct-sourcing model, sometimes described in-house as the work of “Tea Seekers” (Chercheurs de Thé), became the company's core differentiator against older Paris houses selling through intermediaries. From a single shop in the late 1980s, Palais des Thés has grown into one of Europe's larger specialist tea retailers, with more than 150 shops worldwide. For a visitor, the pitch isn't a historic name but a traceable one — teas the house can describe by garden and grower rather than only by blend.
Clanwilliam / South Africa
Rooibos Ltd has supplied rooibos and related herbal products since 1954, based in Clanwilliam in South Africa's Cederberg region — the only place in the world where rooibos grows commercially, a plant endemic to this specific stretch of Western Cape mountain terrain.
Best for Rooibos, green rooibos
Rooibos Ltd has supplied rooibos and related herbal products since 1954, based in Clanwilliam in South Africa's Cederberg region — the only place in the world where rooibos grows commercially, a plant endemic to this specific stretch of Western Cape mountain terrain. The company now exports to more than fifty countries, carrying a plant that was a purely regional South African drink for most of its history out to a genuinely global market.
Beyond standard rooibos, the company processes green rooibos — an unoxidized version that keeps more of the plant's antioxidant content than the traditional fermented, red-brown leaf most drinkers know — alongside honeybush, a related caffeine-free herbal tea, and rosehip products. Its retail presence in Clanwilliam has moved into the newly built House of Rooibos, a combined tea room, shop, and information center covering rooibos history and production, where the company's long-standing factory shop relocated to reach visitors touring what Clanwilliam markets as the Rooibos Capital of the world.
Seventy years of continuous supply from the one region on Earth that grows the plant commercially gives Rooibos Ltd a claim few herbal tea companies anywhere can match: it is not sourcing rooibos from somewhere else, it is operating from the only place rooibos comes from.
San Antonio (multiple locations)
Rosella Coffee has served San Antonio's hospital district since 2014, roasting through San Antonio Coffee Roasters, described as the city's oldest roaster, in operation since 1979. Its Vienna Roast espresso and Black Velvet cold brew anchor three hospital-adjacent locations.
Best for Vienna Roast espresso from San Antonio
Rosella Coffee opened in 2014 with a mission stated plainly on its own site: "taking care of people who take care of people." That is not marketing shorthand — the company's cafés cluster around San Antonio's hospital district, serving healthcare professionals, patients and families at some of the hardest moments they will have. Current owners Tom Schleuning and Julia Bates opened a third hospital-adjacent location in 2022, extending a format built specifically for people who don't have time for a leisurely coffee run.
The beans come from San Antonio Coffee Roasters, the city's longest-running roaster, in business since 1979 — a partnership that gives Rosella access to decades of local roasting experience rather than building a roasting operation from scratch. Three house blends carry the results: Vienna Roast, an espresso blend built around caramel and chocolate notes; Black Velvet, a cold brew leaning into cocoa and dark chocolate; and a Mexico Veracruz drip coffee with citrus and chocolate running through it.
An elevated grab-and-go food program, sourced through local San Antonio vendors, rounds out the counter — freshness and speed both treated as non-negotiable for a clientele that includes people running between hospital shifts.
Trieste / Italy
Founded in 1949 by Libero Petronio in San Dorligo della Valle outside Trieste, this family-run torrefazione roasts 20-plus blends and single origins, sold as whole bean, ground, or Nespresso-compatible capsules. It skips large retail chains, selling only direct and online.
Best for Trieste-area espresso blends and single-origin coffee
San Giusto Caffè was founded in 1949 by Libero Petronio in San Dorligo della Valle, just outside Trieste, and remains family-owned three-quarters of a century later. The location matters to the story it tells about itself: Trieste has long billed itself as Italy's coffee capital, historically the country's main port of entry for green beans, and San Giusto positions its roastery as a continuation of that trading heritage rather than a newcomer riding the city's reputation. The range runs to more than twenty blends and single origins, sold as whole bean, ground, or in capsules compatible with Nespresso, Dolce Gusto, and Lavazza machines — a modern format sitting alongside more traditional offerings like chocolate, cups, and gift sets. The company is explicit that its products are not sold through large-scale Italian retail chains, keeping distribution to its own factory outlet, its website, and export orders rather than supermarket shelves. Orders ship nationwide with free delivery over €35, and delivery within Trieste itself is free regardless of order size, alongside a retail counter at the roastery open weekdays.
Sapporo
Sapporo Coffee Kan opened in 1982 as a coffee wholesaler, added charcoal roasting in 1984, and became a specialty retailer in 1989. Beans are sourced from farms including Brazil's Fazenda San Conrado; its signature product is a charcoal-roasted coffee yokan.
Best for Sapporo Coffee Kan opened in 1982 as a coffee wholesaler
Sapporo Coffee Kan didn't start as a café at all — it opened in 1982 as a wholesale supplier of coffee and tea materials, and only became a specialty retailer in 1989, when it rebranded as 珠房サッポロ珁琴館 and began operating its own shops rather than only supplying other businesses. The roasting identity came a few years earlier still: the company installed charcoal roasting equipment in 1984 and began what it calls authentic charcoal-roasted coffee production, a method it has kept as its signature rather than switching to conventional drum roasting as it grew. That signature shows up in an unusual product: charcoal-roasted coffee yokan, a traditional Japanese sweet reworked with the company's own coffee. Sourcing runs on direct contracts rather than open-market buying — Brazil's Fazenda San Conrado in the Cerrado region, Ugandan beans, Indonesian coffee from Bali's highlands, and multiple Colombian regions are all named directly. The company is now headquartered in Ebetsu, just outside Sapporo, with shops spread across Sapporo's Tsukisamu, Kitamaruyama, Odori, Otani, Kotoni, Atsubetsu, and Hiragishi districts, and it relocated its roasting workshop into a historic building in 2022. More than forty years after the charcoal roasters first went in, that method — plus a genuinely unusual sweet built around it — is still what separates this chain from a standard Sapporo coffee retailer.
Venloer Straße 535, 50825 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Josef Schamong opened in Ehrenfeld in 1949; named crema magazine Röster des Jahres 2019 (crema; Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger).
Best for Ehrenfeld-roasted coffee from a Cologne roastery founded in 1949.
Ulee Kareng, Banda Aceh
A Banda Aceh coffee institution in the Ulee Kareng district, brewing traditional sock-filtered robusta since 1974. It now combines its original coffee shop with an on-site roastery and gallery space.
Best for Traditional sock-filtered Acehnese robusta at an Ulee Kareng roastery operating since 1974
Solong is one of the two or three names Banda Aceh locals reach for first when the subject is Ulee Kareng coffee, the sweeter, syrup-dark robusta tradition tied to this highland district on the city's edge. The shop has operated since 1974, brewing with the sock-filter method distinctive to Aceh -- grounds steeped in a cloth filter and poured from a height, a technique locals treat as inseparable from the coffee's flavor rather than a mere brewing detail. What started as a coffee shop has grown into something closer to a small campus: a roastery on-site producing and packaging its own beans, a gallery space, and grounds large enough for a shaded courtyard and dedicated parking, unusual amenities for a coffee shop built around a decades-old tradition rather than a modern café concept. The address on Jalan Teuku Iskandar, in the Ulee Kareng district itself, means the coffee here is being made a short walk from the highlands its name references, not shipped in and rebranded. For visitors, it functions as both a working coffee shop and something close to a living exhibit of how Aceh has taken its coffee for half a century -- sock filter, high pour, and all -- largely unchanged while the rest of Indonesia's coffee scene moved toward espresso machines and pour-over bars.
German Village & Grandview, Columbus, Ohio
Roasting coffee in Columbus since 1988, Stauf's runs single-origin lots and signature blends in small batches sold beside loose-leaf teas and brewing gear. Its German Village and Grandview cafes double as working roasteries where beans are bagged fresh.
Best for Columbus' first micro-roaster, hand-roasting in small batches since 1988
Stauf's opened in 1988 as Columbus' first micro-roaster, founded by Tom Griesemer after he moved to the city from Berkeley, California. The original Grandview Avenue shop landed its first wholesale account, King Avenue Coffeehouse, within a year of opening, and Stauf's has kept its roasting in-house since day one — a point of difference from cafes that buy pre-roasted beans from someone else's roastery. Coffee is roasted by hand on gas-fired drum roasters in small batches, sourced as specialty-grade green arabica, and shipped or sold within 48 hours of roasting to keep it close to the roast date. The company has since grown to multiple Columbus locations — Grandview, German Village (its second-oldest shop), Victorian Village, the Discovery District, and a stall in the North Market — each doubling as a working roastery where beans are roasted and bagged on site rather than shipped in from a central plant. That local footprint has earned repeated "Best Coffee Shop" recognition from Columbus publications including ColumbusAlive, 614 Magazine, Columbus Monthly and Columbus Underground across multiple years between 2010 and 2017. The company's own line — "the proof is in the cup" — sums up an approach built around freshness and in-house control rather than scale.
Tanna Island / Port Vila / Online
Tanna Coffee sells coffee grown on Tanna Island and roasted and packaged in Vanuatu. Its online range includes medium and dark roasts, alongside an espresso option. The company’s history dates the business to 1984 and describes work with island growers.
Best for Tanna-grown coffee and roast choices
Tanna Coffee grows its coffee on Tanna Island and roasts and packages it in Vanuatu. The brand’s own history dates the business to 1984, distinct from Terry Adlington’s arrival in 1997 to help rebuild production. Its account describes introducing Catimor plants after earlier difficulties with disease and weather. Coffee is grown alongside food crops and native plants rather than treated as a crop that must occupy the whole farm. The company says it buys farmers’ annual parchment coffee, giving the processing business a direct relationship with island growers. For the shopper, the online range offers medium and dark roasts as well as an espresso option. Those choices make roast style a more useful starting point than the country name alone. Tanna is the growing origin. Roasting and packaging are described at the wider Vanuatu level. Tanna growing origin does not mean every production stage takes place on the island. Check the selected product’s roast and pack details before ordering coffee for a particular brewing method.
The coffee is certified organic and never sprayed or fumigated at customs. Every bean is traceable back to the farmers who grew it.
Meckenheim / Germany
TeeGschwendner started in 1976, when 22-year-old Albert Gschwendner, his wife Gwendalina and his brother Karl opened a tea shop in response to what they saw as a lack of good tea retail in Germany.
Best for Curated loose-leaf tea from the family-run German retailer founded in 1976
TeeGschwendner started in 1976, when 22-year-old Albert Gschwendner, his wife Gwendalina and his brother Karl opened a tea shop in response to what they saw as a lack of good tea retail in Germany. A year later they expanded to Bonn under the idea of treating tea as an experience rather than a commodity purchase, and in 1982 the brothers began franchising the concept — an early move for the format in Germany at the time, which let the business expand nationally without the family funding every new shop itself.
The company took its current name in 1999, the same year it launched an online shop. Albert Gschwendner ran the business until his death in 2010; his son Jonathan became general manager in 2019, continuing family involvement into a third generation of leadership. TeeGschwendner describes its buying standard as selecting from a mere 0.5 percent of the world's annual tea harvest.
Now headquartered in Meckenheim with shops across Germany and beyond, TeeGschwendner's franchise model is the part of its history that let a single 1976 shop become a genuinely national tea retailer rather than staying a single Trier storefront.
Mendocino / United States
Joan and Paul Katzeff founded this Fort Bragg roastery in 1972 on Bird Friendly, organic and fair-trade coffee, now a B Corp and Roast Magazine's Roaster of the Year. Its Cause Coffees program has raised over $650,000 for partner causes.
Best for Bird Friendly and fair-trade coffees since 1972
Joan and Paul Katzeff founded Thanksgiving Coffee Company in Fort Bragg in 1972, and the business has since built its identity around certification rather than roast style alone: Bird Friendly, organic and fair-trade coffees sit across the catalog, backed by B Corp status and a run of outside recognition that includes a Roast Magazine Roaster of the Year title, a Good Food Award, a Global Citizenship Award, and B Lab's Best For The World Community designation. The company sources through family-farm cooperatives rather than individual estate contracts, a structural choice that lines up with its Cause Coffees program, which the company states has raised more than $650,000 for partner organizations to date. That program runs alongside more conventional subscription offerings, including Roastmaster's Select, Single Origin and Dark Roast coffee clubs, and named coffees such as a Kenya Nyeri Peaberry, a Grey Whale Blend, a Guatemala Dark Roast and a Northern Italian Style Espresso, priced between $20 and $26. More than fifty years after its founding, the company still frames its coffee explicitly around social mission rather than treating certification as a marketing add-on to an otherwise conventional roasting business.
Piazza, Addis Ababa
Tomoca is an Addis Ababa coffee business whose history reaches back to 1953. Its current outlet page distinguishes Old Tomoca on Wavel Street in Piazza from other branches and its roastery. The original café also appears in Yared Zeleke’s 2015 account of the city for The Guardian.
Best for Coffee at the original Piazza café
Tomoca is an Addis Ababa coffee roaster and coffee-house business whose official history dates to 1953. Its original branch, Old Tomoca, stands on Wavel Street near Piassa Cathedral School in central Addis Ababa. The company identifies it as the first branch in its network. The operation is not limited to drinks served at the bar. Tomoca also sells packaged dark-roasted Harrar ground coffee in several bag sizes, identifying Arabica coffee as the base, and its outlet list includes a roastery as well as café formats. Across Addis Ababa, the house connects Ethiopian coffee with a long-running urban café culture. The Piassa address carries the historical identity, while branches on Churchill Road, Main Bole Road, at the Radisson Blu and in Sarbet extend the format through the city. The official directory also distinguishes a gallery outlet and the Bole roastery. Tomoca therefore operates as both a heritage coffee house and a working roaster with packaged coffee, keeping the original Piassa branch connected to the company's continuing production and retail story.
Trieste / Italy
Roasting on Piazza Cavana since 1948, Torrefazione La Triestina is one of Trieste's last working coffee roasters, selling green and roasted beans and on-site tastings alongside a wide range of loose-leaf teas, infusions and teaware.
Best for Coffee roasted and tasted on-site since 1948 at one of Trieste's last
Torrefazione La Triestina has run as a coffee roaster and tasting room on Piazza Cavana, in Trieste's old town, since 1948, and describes itself as one of the few historic roasters in the city still actively working rather than having become a café-only retail brand. The shop still sells both raw green coffee and roasted beans, and keeps the tasting tradition alive: customers can sample blends on-site, typically paired with a croissant, in a format closer to a working roaster's counter than a modern espresso bar. That coffee-first identity has expanded over the decades into a wider grocery of hot-beverage goods — a range of teas, infusions and herbal teas from established brands sits alongside the coffee offer, plus chocolates, pastries, honey and jam, and teaware including teapots and infusers for customers building a home setup. Trieste's own identity is unusually bound up with coffee — the city was a historic import hub under the Habsburg empire and still has an outsized concentration of roasters and coffee bars for its size — and La Triestina's own framing leans into that, describing itself as embodying the bond between the city and coffee going back generations. For a shop nearly eight decades old, it still functions as a working roastery with a public counter, not a heritage-branded retail shell.
Holliston / USA
Tom Eck left a career at Stratus Computer in 1989 to start Upton Tea Imports as a mail-order business run out of Upton, Massachusetts, aiming to bring North American tea drinkers the kind of specialist, personalized service he associated with European tea merchants.
Best for 2,000+ loose-leaf teas from a specialist Massachusetts mail-order importer
Tom Eck left a career at Stratus Computer in 1989 to start Upton Tea Imports as a mail-order business run out of Upton, Massachusetts, aiming to bring North American tea drinkers the kind of specialist, personalized service he associated with European tea merchants. The company's first quarterly newsletter, published before the end of that year, ran just six pages and featured roughly two dozen teas, mostly oolongs and greens.
Thirty-five years later, Upton has grown to more than 2,000 varieties and over 30,000 square feet of warehouse and office space, still built around loose-leaf tea rather than bagged or bottled products, and still declining what the company calls "the overly commercial route" in favor of quality and knowledgeable service. The Republic of Tea acquired the Upton trademark in 2016, though the business continues operating under its original name.
From a six-page newsletter and two dozen teas mailed out of Upton, Massachusetts, to a 30,000-square-foot operation stocking over 2,000 varieties — still run on the same specialist, mail-order-first model Eck started it with.
Albuquerque / USA
Villa Myriam Specialty Coffee is run by Juan and David Certain, third-generation Colombian-American brothers who grow, import, and roast coffee from their family's own plantation in Piendamó, Cauca, Colombia — a farm founded by their grandfather, Joaquín Esteban, in 1961.
Best for Coffee grown on their own Rainforest Alliance-certified family plantation
Villa Myriam Specialty Coffee is run by Juan and David Certain, third-generation Colombian-American brothers who grow, import, and roast coffee from their family's own plantation in Piendamó, Cauca, Colombia — a farm founded by their grandfather, Joaquín Esteban, in 1961. The plantation carries Rainforest Alliance certification, and the brothers control the coffee at every stage between that Cauca hillside and the roaster in Albuquerque, New Mexico, rather than buying green coffee from outside growers.
Three generations deep into the same family land, Villa Myriam is one of the more literal single-farm operations in the Americas — the people roasting the coffee are the direct descendants of the person who planted the trees, and the supply chain from Piendamó to New Mexico runs entirely through family hands.
No. 55, Minle St., Datong Dist., Taipei City, Taiwan / Taipei / Taiwan
Opened 1946 by Yao Dehe as a Yongle Market herb stall; still a working Minle St herb shop selling dried herbs plus bottled qingcao tea (PeoPo; Crossing).
Best for Dried herbs and bottled qingcao tea from a Minle Street shop.
Tenom, Sabah, Malaysia
Yit Foh has roasted coffee in Tenom, Sabah, since 1960, when founder Yong Loong Vun began the business. In 2017 it opened Yit Foh Coffee Park, adding a restaurant and cottages to the original factory site.
Best for Sabah white coffee roasted since 1960
Yit Foh dates to 1960, when founder Yong Loong Vun began roasting coffee in Tenom, Sabah, working with beans grown locally rather than imported stock — the company describes itself as the town's oldest and most established coffee factory. Over more than five decades as a roasting operation, it built a product line around Sabah white coffee and Kopi-O before diversifying in 2017 with the opening of Yit Foh Coffee Park, which added a restaurant and cottage accommodation to the original factory site and turned it into a day-trip destination commonly visited from Kota Kinabalu. The current catalog runs well beyond a single house blend: white coffee variants, a drip coffee series, powdered mixes, café au lait, teh tarik, and a Musang King Durian White Coffee that ties the shop's coffee-roasting heritage to a distinctly Malaysian ingredient rather than a generic flavor add-on. Packs start around RM7–8, keeping the everyday product line accessible rather than positioned as a premium specialty good, while the coffee park draws visitors in specifically to see where the beans are roasted. For a business built on a single Tenom factory for most of its history, the 2017 expansion into hospitality marks the clearest shift from wholesale roaster to a branded, visitable heritage destination.
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