More than 300 international spices, herbs, salts, chiles, peppers, sugars, extracts, and blends are on offer at San Francisco’s Spice Ace. Wife-and-husband owners and cooking enthusiasts Olivia Dillan and Ben Balzer are so committed to sourcing fresh, sustainably harvested products that they gave up their tech jobs to start their business. “Spices became our small joy and really made our daily life and foods better,” says Balzer.

Toward that end, the duo package all of their spices in small batches, in recyclable glass jars, and carry hard-to-find and just plain exotic items, like ultrahot Central American Wiri-Wiri chiles, Indonesian Cubeb pepper berries, and Kala Namak (Indian black sea salt).