Dobrá Čajovna

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.