Talchá

Mônica Schvartsman and her daughter Mariana — then a university student studying economics — founded Talchá in São Paulo after a trip Mônica took to Paris left her, in Mariana's own account, with "a transformative experience in a French tea shop." The pair spent roughly two years developing blends before opening their first physical store at Shopping Pátio Higienópolis in November 2010, following it with a second at Shopping JK Iguatemi in 2012 -- the company's current store locator still lists just these two São Paulo locations, alongside nationwide e-commerce.

The founding idea was explicitly corrective: Mariana has said many Brazilians saw tea as something closer to medicine, and the business set out to show it could be "flavorful, aromatic and pleasurable" instead, building a catalog of more than 80 blend combinations around the argument that tea, like wine, carries its own terroir. The range runs from house blends to premium imported single-origin teas — Silver Needle, Gyokuro, Jasmine Pearls — and rarities like a Golden Pu-erh reserve, sold alongside a B2B program supplying cafés, restaurants, hotels and spas.

Fifteen years after one mother-daughter pair's Paris-inspired bet that Brazil had room for a French-style tea shop, Talchá is now one of São Paulo's more established gourmet tea retailers, still built on the same terroir-first argument it opened with.