Balzac’s Coffee Roasters brings Café Culture to Ontario

Balzac’s Coffee Roasters had grown from a small café in Stratford, Ontario into a successful chain within a relatively short stretch of time. It can be a challenge for any company to scale up effectively, but Balzac’s managed to grow into a series of artful spaces that retain local characteristics without using cookie-cutter branding to establish itself as a chain.

Canadian Vending had a chance to speak with Kelly Duffy, the director for wholesale at Balzac’s, who discussed the Ontario chains expansion into the Office Coffee Service industry, as well as the philosophy behind their Parisian-style coffee culture. “The name came from Honoré de Balzac, the French writer who was known to have drunk tens of cups of coffee a day. It eventually did him in,” she laughs, “but then, he did most of his writing in cafés.”

Duffy quotes Balzac: “‘The café is the Peoples’ Parliament’. That’s our mission statement. We try to create an environment that’s for everybody.” While today’s coffee drinkers can’t all be revolutionaries, she does recognize some well-known faces in the performing arts who frequent their shops. Its growing popularity helped it expand into home brewing and more recently, the OCS spaces. Click here to continue reading.