This article originally appeared in the July-August 2026 edition of our sister publication, South Sound Business.
LaDonna Olmstead didn’t know much about tea when she agreed to take the reins at the Sumner-founded Tea Madame 20 years ago.
“I got a job (at Sumner’s Windmill Bistro) and the owner’s wife owned the tea shop, and I had gone into that tea shop a couple times and was like, ‘This is so beautiful.’ I loved it; it was something special,” Olmstead recounted. “She walked in one day and said, ‘I wish someone would come buy the tea shop’ — and I bought it from her. It was as easy as that.”…