Balzac’s coffee operations set for caffeine jolt
Roaster looks to boost volume, add as many as 4 café locations next year
HAMILTON—Balzac’s Coffee Roasters hopes to be roasting a higher volume of beans at its Ancaster plant as the company moves to open new cafés and grow grocery sales of packaged blends.
The company announced last week that Ron Cecillon, whose experience spans Kelseys, Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s, will lead Balzac’s growth as its new CEO.
As the newly named chief design officer, Balzac’s founder Diana Olsen will shift her focus to opening as many as four new cafés next year to add to the brand’s 14 existing cafés in Niagara, Toronto and other locations in southern Ontario.
“Balzac’s first and foremost is a coffee roasting company and we are in grocery stores all across Canada, so that is another part of our business that we want to focus on growing,” Olsen said. The company’s coffee roasting operation moved from
Stoney Creek to its location in Ancaster three years ago.
“I feel like I built a foundation over the last 25 years that’s really strong and enduring and I think now it’s almost the perfect time to enter a new phase where our growth is a little more accelerated,” Olsen said of the CEO appointment.
“We felt now is the time to bring in someone who could help me bring the company through that next phase,” Olsen said.
“I started roasting coffee in a garage — it’s been my life’s work — but I was feeling a lot of pressure with decisions when you have a company this size,” Olsen said. About 160 staff work in Balzac’s cafés and the Ancaster plant.
Olsen is not afraid to seek assistance in her growth, and did so in a high-profile way when she appeared on CBC’s “Dragon’s Den” in 2011, getting $350,000 for 20 per cent of her company. Dragons Arlene Dickinson and Bruce Croxon came on board as investors.
“I feel like I have a very open mind to learning — I don’t want to hang on to things just because I’m the founder and I’m not open to change,” Olsen said. “I’m proud that Balzac’s has been the company that’s evolved.”
Olsen said her equity in the company has dropped further over the past decade, but with her new design position and Dickinson as her “primary investor” she maintains confidence that the signature look and feel of her cafés will be preserved through the expansion.
“Coffee shops on the whole are all growing — you can see the growth with some of the brands that came after me and the ones that came before me,” Olsen said.
But if you are imagining that Balzac’s will sprout into hundreds of franchise locations, think again.
“Franchising is a word that has not ever come across my desk,” Olsen said, preferring to describe the strategy as “boutique scale.”
“We want to maintain the quality and the integrity of the brand and continue to be very particular and discerning with the locations we choose.”
The “Grand Café” feel of 19thcentury French society is evident in the designs of Balzac’s shops in Toronto’s Liberty Village and Distillery District as well as at Ryerson University.
Other local spots include Port Dalhousie, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Kitchener and Stratford.