Saveur PimenThé

Saveur PimenThé has traded from Lausanne's Rue de la Madeleine since 1932, when the shop - then trading as Au Café du Brésil, a few doors up the same street - moved into its current address; it ranks among the city's earliest dedicated tea retailers. Roasting still happens in the back room, on equipment dating to the 1950s, when gas service first reached the building, and the shop today carries around 200 loose-leaf teas spanning white, black, green, herbal and mate styles alongside coffees sourced from origins including Peru, Colombia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Haiti. Current owner Magali Halt took over the business in 2015 after training in the trade, and has kept the blending and roasting in-house rather than shifting to pre-packed lines, while expanding the range into spice blends sourced from her own travels abroad. The shop stocks well beyond its counter footprint - thousands of individual items by some counts, from teapots and brewing accessories to maple syrup - but the identity stays anchored in the original trade: tea, coffee and spices, blended and roasted on premises rather than bought in bulk from a distributor. For a shop this size, the sourcing is unusually hands-on, with Halt traveling to origin herself to select lots and describing an emphasis on equitable terms with the farms she buys from.