FAQ & Policies

Storefront & Pick-Up

Yes! Come visit us Tues-Fri 11 AM - 7 PM, Sat 10 AM - 6 PM, or Sun 12 PM - 6 PM. Masks are optional as of March 2022 for all shoppers and staff. Our staff are fully vaccinated and we provide masks at the door if desired.

The City of Cambridge lifted its mask mandate as of March 2022 and so wearing a mask is personal preference. All our staff are fully vaccinated and we continue to offer masks at the door for people who want them.

Yes! Place your order online and select Pick-Up in the shipping portion of the checkout process. Pickup orders are processed within 1-4 business days. We will email you when your order is ready to pickup. 

Pickup hours mirror shopping hours (Tu-F 11-7, Sa 10-6, Su 12-6)

We will hold pickup orders for two weeks after sending a notification that the order is ready. After 14 days, the order will be considered abandoned and subject to cancellation without refund.

Online Orders & Payment

We do not include prices with any shipped packages. All orders are shipped with a packing slip so the recipient can see who the order is from and how to contact us if there are any issues with the order. You can leave a gift note in the 'Comments' box when viewing your cart before checking out- this will be printed on the packing slip.

Yes! All of our gift sets come in gift boxes. If you would like us to box up individually purchased spices (in bags, jars, or tins), please add this Gift Wrap option to your cart.

If you need to make a change to your order, please CALL US at (617)945-1888, option 3, as soon as possible on the weekend, and email us at support@curiospice.com on weekdays. While we are unable to add items to your order, we are happy to assist you with canceling and re-placing your order with the additional item(s). We are however able to remove items from your order for a refund as long as we have not begun processing your order for shipping. We can refund you in-store for items removed from pickups.

Yes! Gift cards can now be used both in-store and online. 

Use the help feature on our website (bottom right), which will submit an email ticket to our support team, or send us an email at support@curiospice.com. We'll do our best to return your inquiry within 24 hours. Inquiries submitted after hours on Saturday or all day Sunday will be answered on Monday.

Yes, you may call us at (617)945-1888 x3 Mon-Sat 10- to place an order for shipping. Calls on Sunday will be returned Monday. To place an order for in-store pickup, call (617)945-1888 x2 Tues-Fri 11-7pm, Sat 10-6pm, Sun 12-6pm. Note that the shop is closed on Mondays.

Yes! We accept all express checkout methods, including ApplePay, ShopPay, PayPal, and Google Pay.

Yes, for most spices. Many have a bulk jar/bag option available on the product page - you can see a complete list of bulk offerings here. If you don't see what you're looking for, email us with as much information as possible about your needs and we’ll send you a quote, or email wholesale@curiospice.com for foodservice pricing.

Shipping & Receiving Orders

You will likely receive your order within 5-7 business days from when you place it (for orders placed between 8AM - 5PM EST). We’re currently processing orders for shipping in 1-3 business days, and then shipping will take an additional 1-3 business days depending on where you live. You will receive a shipping confirmation email with tracking information once your order has shipped. If you haven’t received your order within 12 days of placing it, please contact us by email at support@curiospice.com.

We offer USPS Priority Mail Express for online orders. You can select that option at checkout. Priority Mail Express is next-day to 2-day with delivery by 6pm from when USPS received the package. We do our best to process these orders as quickly as possible within our 1-3 day turn-around for shipping orders. The availability of products can impact how quickly your order is shipped, so please call us if you need your order to arrive by a certain time and we can assist you with your order.

If your order subtotal is at least $75 and is shipping within the U.S., we'll cover the cost of shipping, and the discount will apply automatically at checkout — no discount code required. We will choose the most economical carrier for shipping your order. Usually that will be USPS Priority, or UPS Ground.

Please email us at support@curiospice.com to let us know. Many carriers mark packages as delivered prior to actual delivery, which triggers the system to notify you too early. Usually these packages will be delivered within the next 5 business days. Sometimes they may have been left in an unusual place, or delivered to a neighbor.

Email us right away (within 30 days of receiving your order) and include your order number. Photos are helpful. We’ll get a replacement or the missing item shipped out promptly.

Yes, as long as the order has not already been shipped out . Please CALL US with this information as soon as possible for the best chance of being able to redirect your package. If the order has already been picked up by the carrier, unfortunately there is not much we can do to redirect it. You can try calling the carrier’s local annex to have it held or redirected, or you can try to make arrangements to have it refused/sent back to us from the address where the package is headed. We are happy to reship the order once it makes its way back to us, but will pass on the shipping charges to you.

Yes! Select your shipping country at checkout and choose your preferred international rate. Please note that we are not responsible for reshipping international packages that are returned to us. We will reach out to you so you can purchase a new shipping label. Additionally, customers are responsible for paying VAT in order to receive their order. Incorrect or items damaged in shipping will be refunded if we are notified within 30 days of package delivery; we are not able to ship replacements internationally. Please check your country's import rules before purchasing bulk sizes of any spices, as there may be size restrictions for food items. If you have any further questions please contact us at support@curiospice.com

All sales of consumable items and gift cards are final. If your order is damaged or incorrect, please let us know within 30 days of delivery by emailing support@curiospice.com. For select unused, unopened, non-food retail items (e.g. pepper grinders), returns or exchanges may be possible. Customers are responsible for all shipping costs for returns or exchanges.

Products & Packaging

Yes! Our pure spices and Classic Blends come in various sizes of glass jars or resealable bags. (The options for each item are shown in a pull-down menu under packaging type on its product page). Our Signature Blends are packed only in vintage-inspired tins. You can purchase our empty spice jars here.

The quality and purity of our spices is important to us. We work diligently with our producers and suppliers to perform testing for microbes and other contaminants to ensure we’re supplying the safest and best quality spices possible. Heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium), which occur naturally in plants in levels that vary depending on origin, can be harmful in significant amounts. Curio Spice Company periodically tests our spices, especially those prone to heavy metal uptake from soil, using third party laboratories.

The current spice bags are actually a little more eco-friendly than our old bags, which were neither recyclable or compostable. The old bags were shipped from overseas to a US distributor, and then shipped to a silkscreener to print the backs with our branding, and then shipped to us to be stickered and labelled in-house. The new bags are digitally printed right here in Boston, so the carbon footprint is a lot smaller, and we've now removed the waste associated with silkscreening and stickering. We're also now supporting a local business with our packaging purchases!

We make sure to source the freshest and most aromatic spices we can, and it is important to us to pass that along to our customers. While spices don't really go bad, they can lose potency over time. The date on the jar indicates the timeframe for optimal freshness. In the spirit of limiting food waste, we chose 'Better By' to communicate that the spice is at its best within that date, but still perfectly useable after it has past.

Secret Spice Society Subscriptions

We recently changed the name of our subscription to Secret Spice Society! It is still the same subscription you know and love, but we decided to go back to the name we used originally.  We think it has a great ring to it!

We have three subscriptions you can chose from: 6-month, 12-month, and rolling.  The 6- and 12-month gift subscriptions charge monthly, and automatically terminate after the 6th or 12th charge. Rolling subscriptions charge monthly indefinitely and can be cancelled any time.  

All three types of subscription (rolling, 6-, and 12-month gift) can be gifted easily by using the recipient’s name and address as the shipping address.  You can add a gift note in the comments box when viewing your cart prior to checkout.  Please be sure to use your own email address when checking out so you receive a receipt and shipping confirmation email each month.  This also allows you to manage the subscription by creating an account on our website, which is tied to your email as the purchaser.

Yes, you can have multiple active subscriptions at the same time.  If you want them to ship to different people, then you must purchase them separately, in separate transactions.  If you have purchased multiple subscriptions in one transaction, they will all ship to the same address and cannot be separated.  Please get in touch with us at support@curiospice.com in this case, to let us know that this was your intention so we can note that in our system, or so we can assist you with creating subscriptions with separate shipping addresses.

All versions of the Secret Spice Society charge $12 a month, on the same day you first purchased the subscription.  So for example if you purchased a 6-month gift subscription on the 20th of May, you will subsequently be charged on the 20th of each month, for a total of 6 months.  The 6- and 12-month subscriptions automatically terminate and will not renew unless you take action to purchase a new subscription.  The rolling subscription will charge monthly until you cancel it.

We ship each month’s spice the day after the order generates in our system.  So when you initially purchase a subscription to the Secret Spice Society, we will ship the first installment the day after you place the order.  After the first month we are able to change the date your subscription charges you, which will also change the timing for when you receive it.  Please feel free to email support or call us at (617)945-1888 x3, if you need to make this change.

Yes! You can change the shipping information by creating or logging into your curio account, and navigating to the subscription page.  You can also call or email support and we will assist you.  Any address change that happens prior to the day your subscription charges you each month will be effective immediately.  Any changes that happen after you have been charged will effect next month's shipment.  If you have been charged, need to change the shipping address, and have not yet received your shipping notification, please call us ASAP at (617)945-1888 x3.  We may be able to catch your order before it is shipped.  Please note that we cannot guarantee this.

Please email us at support@curiospice.com, or respond to your most recent order confirmation email and we will send you a link where you can securely update your payment method.  If your card has been declined and you need to change it, the system should email you a link to update.  You can also call or email us for assistance. 

Currently all our Secret Spice Society subscriptions charge monthly, and don’t have the option to prepay upfront.  If you have accidentally purchased multiple subscriptions, please get in touch with us at support@curiospice.com before the next month and we can assist you. 

You are able to skip a month by contacting us, or logging into your curio account on our website and navigating to the subscriptions tab.  Additionally, we are able to change the shipping address, recipient, or ship date for your subscription.

You can cancel your rolling subscription any time from the subscriptions page in your curio account, or by emailing us at support@curiospice.com, or responding to your most recent subscription order confirmation/shipping notification.  You can always sign up again in the future.  Gift subscriptions for 6- or 12-month durations are fixed and will automatically terminate after the 6th or 12th charge.  Please feel free to let us know why you canceled your subscription!  We value customer feedback to help us continually improve the Secret Spice Society.

You can purchase a new gift subscription the month after the previous one expired on our website.  This will make sure there is no gap or overlap between the two subscriptions, since we send the first month immediately.  You can additionally purchase it on the same day, or ask us to move the ship date to match the old ship date.  Please get in touch if you need assistance or have any questions.

Yes! We carefully curate the Secret Spice Society 12 months in advance to make sure it remains fun and interesting regardless of how long someone has been subscribed.  Additionally, all the types of subscriptions are sent the same thoughtfully selected spice and recipes each month- the only difference is the duration of the subscription.

Get in touch with us at support@curiospice.com within 30 days of receiveing the damaged item so we can send you a replacement. Once you realize your order has been lost or never delivered, get in touch with us right away.  Please include a photo of the damaged item, and any details you have.