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Sustainability starts with intentionality
  • Mar 06, 2023
Starting out as a single coffee cart in 1993, Balzac’s Coffee Roasters has scaled to 16 stores across Ontario and has a growing retail distribution...
Balzac’s Coffee Roasters announces new partnership with Califia Farms
  • Feb 01, 2023
The Canadian specialty coffee roaster and café chain says the introduction of Califia Farms’ oat and almond dairy alternatives will support its ‘affordable luxury’ offering...
The cost of great coffee at home
  • Jan 23, 2023
As for beans, I have a soft spot for Balzac’s, which in the mid-nineties helped bring French coffee culture to Canada. They also opened cafés...
Black Coffee, Green Thinking

Black Coffee, Green Thinking

Balzac’s Coffee is promoting Sustainability, One Sip at a Time

From the time the first Balzac’s café opened in Stratford, Ont. in 1996, founder Diana Olsen knew she wanted to create something unique for the North American coffee scene.

After graduating with a degree in French Literature, Olsen spent a year and a half in France. Passing many pleasant afternoons immersed in the grand cafés of Paris, she found a kindred spirit in the novelist Honoré de Balzac –– a famed coffee-lover himself who declared that “the café is the people’s parliament.” Taking this sentiment to heart, she travelled to San Francisco in 1993, where she expanded her java knowledge by studying the craft of coffee-bean roasting and selection at the West Coast Specialty Coffee Training Institute.

Drawing on her experience abroad, Olsen had a clear vision of what she wanted to create with her own coffee business. “The inspiration for Balzac’s was from the cafés in Paris where ‘takeout’ and ‘fast-food’ are not the driving forces,” she explains. “We have always considered the health, the quality, the source and sustainability amongst our founding values.” Click here to continue reading.

Coffee,Environmental Sustainability,Press

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Recent Posts

Sustainability starts with intentionality
  • Mar 06, 2023
Starting out as a single coffee cart in 1993, Balzac’s Coffee Roasters has scaled to 16 stores across Ontario and has a growing retail distribution...
Balzac’s Coffee Roasters announces new partnership with Califia Farms
  • Feb 01, 2023
The Canadian specialty coffee roaster and café chain says the introduction of Califia Farms’ oat and almond dairy alternatives will support its ‘affordable luxury’ offering...
The cost of great coffee at home
  • Jan 23, 2023
As for beans, I have a soft spot for Balzac’s, which in the mid-nineties helped bring French coffee culture to Canada. They also opened cafés...