An importer of fine green coffees for over 100 years

Who We Are

Balzac Brothers is a small, independent, fourth-generation family-owned and operated green coffee importer based at 11 Fulton Street in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1917 by Richard and Ralph Balzac, we have spent more than a century connecting great coffee with great people.

Today our focus is specialty coffee. We work with producers, cooperatives and exporters around the world, and with roasters and coffee professionals across the United States and Canada, to bring traceable, relationship-based green coffees from origin to the roastery.

Our Approach

Partnerships at Origin

We believe in partnerships that are repeatable, scalable and mutually beneficial: relationships that return season after season and grow alongside the farms we buy from. We buy coffee from them at origin, take on the risk of shipping and importing it, and bring it into our warehouses here in the United States. Many of the producers and cooperatives we work with have sold us their coffee harvest after harvest.

For farmers, that means a reliable buyer at origin who values quality and invests in the long term. For our roasting partners, it means consistent, traceable coffees already landed in the U.S., along with the stories behind them.

Checking freshly harvested coffee cherries at origin

In the Lab

Great coffee starts at origin, but it doesn’t stop there. Our Q Grader team cups and evaluates every coffee we source in our SCA-certified lab in downtown Charleston, confirming it cups the way we planned and collecting the quality data, tasting notes and analysis that help our customers buy with confidence. Regular team calibration sessions keep our scores and flavor descriptors aligned, and your sales representative is always happy to walk you through them.

+ Explore our coffees and the farms behind them + How we cup

Cupping green coffee samples in the Balzac lab

Sustainability

Sustainability

Great coffee starts with great people, and supporting the communities that grow our coffee has always been part of who we are.

Every pound of Fair Trade Certified coffee we buy adds a premium to producer Community Development Funds, and producer organizations decide democratically how to invest it, from education and healthcare to infrastructure. We also import Rainforest Alliance Certified, Organic and Regenerative Organic Certified coffees, and we are longtime supporters of Grounds for Health, which brings cervical cancer screening and treatment to women in coffee-growing communities.

Closer to home, our observation hive from The Bee Cause Project has lived in our lab for more than a decade, and we are proud to partner with organizations working toward a thriving Lowcountry community.