Our Story

For years, our owner (Taz) has been making spice and seasoning blends for his own use from recipes he learned from chefs, restaurants, and home cooks while traveling the globe. In 2006 he fell into an opportunity to teach ethnic cooking classes with a focus on authenticity and so, Taz Cooks cooking classes where born. With the classes came larger batches of his unique spice blends and the development of his own proprietary blend recipes. This increased the need for many herbs, spices, and other ingredients that are integral to creating truly authentic dishes from the cuisines of the world but are not readily or easily available outside of their country or region of origin. With this need came the difficult task of sourcing and obtaining these elusive herbs and spices leading to the development of a network of suppliers all over the world some as small as family farms. Along this journey, Taz found himself supplying hard to find ingredients as well as his unique blends to friends, family, and persistent students making special requests.

With the growing demand generated by his cooking classes, personal use, and the odd fulfillment of requests, Taz had to source and purchase herbs and spices in larger and larger bulk amounts in order to keep up with needs. Over time, this purchasing in bulk led to many jokes that there was no more room for food in the house due to the quantity of herbs and spices being kept on hand. (This was true.)

While the idea of creating a brand to offer his proprietary blends as well as packaged herbs and spices to a wider audience had always existed, the cooking classes were the first priority. In 2020, the pandemic brought an abrupt halt to in person cooking classes but the requests for supplies of herbs, spices, and blends to friends, family, and past students increased. These circumstances suggested that business pursuits should pivot to pursue the goal of expanding into an actual producer and supplier of herbs, spices, and blends. It has been a long and arduous process, but Tasmanian Spice Traders is the happy result of these efforts.