The Spice & Tea Exchange of Alexandria

The first time Joy Quinn-Whalen stepped foot in an outpost of The Spice and Tea Exchange franchise, she wasn’t in a great mood. She had a lot of work to do at her consulting job, and she had just stepped into the store because her client was late for dinner. “I shot the owner a look like, ‘Don’t even bother talking to me because I’m not here to shop,'” she says. But that didn’t stop the owner from showing Joy a newly-mixed spice blend, and then a little cup of tea. Before she knew it, Joy found herself opening all sorts of different types of spice jars.

“My family was big into cooking and entertaining. Everything we did was always celebrated around food,” she says. She surprised herself by walking out of the shop with $85 of products and with the wheels turning in her head about bringing this shopping experience to Old Town, where she lived at the time.”It just totally turned around my entire evening in 20 minutes,” she says of her interaction at a Spice and Tea Exchange. “And I bought the product that I wasn’t expecting to buy. And then, you know, a couple months later, I bought into the whole franchise.”

Joy opened The Spice & Tea Exchange of Alexandria in 2010 in the heart of Old Town, just steps from City Hall and Market Square. More than 15 years later and with the addition of franchises in Annapolis and Rehoboth, she is still as passionate about this culinary wonderland of gourmet teas, fine spices and hand-crafted spice blends. “Our mantra [is] creating joy for ourselves and our customers, every shift, every interaction.”

Your senses are engaged when you’re shopping at The Spice & Tea Exchange of Alexandria, which carries everything from infused sugars and finishing salts (think bacon salt) to handcrafted blends and rubs for steak, seafood, pasta, curries, and more. Many blends are handcrafted in the shop daily.

Teas are also very popular, including options like herbal tea or blueberry black tea or pumpkin chai in the fall. Pantry spices like cinnamon or paprika are all very high quality and “very, very fresh,” says Joy, noting that the product never sits on a grocery shelf or in a long supply chain process.

The products are all arranged with display jars, so shoppers can open the jar and take a whiff. “Smelling is the gateway to taste, right? And so we really want people to experience, you come in, you see the vibrancy of the colors of all the products that we carry,” she says. And in some cases, you can even try a taste of a featured product, like this season’s special pistachio sugar.

Joy loves the location of her Old Town shop, which appeals to both locals who pop in to see what’s new and tourists as well. “We’re in a great tourist destination,” she says. “So a lot of the folks that we have are tourists, or they’re people that come back year over year, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we had to make our stop at the spice shop before we left.'”

While some shoppers are gourmands, you can be a total cooking novice and get great advice on your next meal. Joy loves the Vik’s Garlic Fix! Spice blend in particular. “That makes anything taste better,” she says. “Put it on chicken, put in your mashed potatoes, put it on roasted broccoli, put it in sour cream for a chip dip. It’s just so universally applicable to anything you’re trying to do fast.”

The newest initiative for The Spice & Tea Exchange of Alexandria is becoming a destination for cooking and wellness experiences. One such offering is a tea presentation on everything from the history of tea to steeping tea properly followed by a tasting and sampling experience. In the past, The Spice & Tea Exchange team members also led events at historic Old Town venues like Gadsby’s Tavern or Carlyle House.

“I think that’s what people want now. They don’t want a transaction. They want an experience. It makes it more exciting for us [too],” Joy says. “We’re more than just a retail store. We are an experiential culinary and hospitality company that can do a lot of things that feature our product.”

Image credit to Joy Quinn-Whalen 

Visit The Spice & Tea Exchange of Alexandria at 320 King Street Alexandria, Virginia