Just Add Honey Tea Company

Just Add Honey Tea Company was launched in 2006 by Brandi Shelton, who the house calls the tea lady, and grew from a weekend hobby into a retail café, an online shop and a wholesale brand carried by restaurants, boutiques and hotels. Her husband Jermail is co-owner and oversees marketing, operations and growth. The café sits on the Atlanta BeltLine between Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park, at 684 John Wesley Dobbs Avenue, Unit E, and opens Tuesday to Sunday from seven in the morning to seven at night.

The list is priced by the ounce first and by bag or tin second, so the entry point is low. The house keeps its plain teas plainly named: Just Black is an organic Keemun from Qimen County, Just Green an organic sencha from Kagoshima, and both are the cheapest ounces on the list. Above them sit an organic Assam, a pouchong oolong from Pinglin Township in Taiwan sold simply as Oolong Tea, a Yunnan white called Silver Moonlight and a matcha that comes only as a one-ounce tin. Flavored blends such as Georgia Peaches and Earl Grey Cream fill out the rest.

It is a café as much as a shop: tea by the cup, lattes, a rotating tea of the month, seasonal iced teas, locally roasted coffee from Portrait and desserts, with a patio outside. Inside there is a small bookstore of titles on tea, food and slow living, monthly tea blending classes, free Sipping School sessions on subjects like the geography of tea, and afternoon tea parties on request. Online orders go out by USPS and usually arrive in five to seven business days; the teas are also stocked at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and at Saturday and Sunday farmers markets around the city.