Saratoga Tea & Honey Co.

Saratoga Tea & Honey Co. opened in May 2015 at 348 Broadway in Saratoga Springs, in the former home of the Symmetry art gallery, founded by chef-owner Hayley Stevens. She has described the venture as an unusual one for the time, a dedicated tea and honey shop was not a common concept locally, and credits guidance from Clint and Barbara Braidwood, founders of nearby Saratoga Olive Oil, for helping get the business off the ground.

The shop functions as a working tea bar, with staff, called Tea Tenders, preparing drinks to order from a stock of loose-leaf and pyramid-bag teas spanning green, black, white, oolong, aged and matcha styles, alongside raw and infused honeys, teaware and gifts. Stevens sources the tea selection herself, a hands-on approach regulars point to when explaining the shop's consistency. Now roughly a decade on Broadway, Saratoga Tea & Honey Co. has built its identity around personal curation and in-person tasting rather than a mass retail tea catalog, treating the tea bar itself, not just the shelf of packaged tea, as the core of the shop.