Blanchard's Coffee Roasting Co.

Overview

Blanchard's Coffee Roasting Co. was founded in January 2005 by 25-year-old David Blanchard, a Richmond native and University of Richmond business graduate who sold his wife Kelly's Toyota 4Runner — a college graduation present — to buy a small Ambex roaster he set up in his father's garage. Three months later a chance meeting with his old marketing professor put the coffee in front of a Ukrop's executive at Joe's Market, launching a wholesale grocery program that now extends to about 100 locations across Virginia, DC, and southern Maryland.

Known for

• First serious wholesale specialty roaster to come out of Richmond, anchoring Virginia's specialty scene
• 'Dark as Dark' signature blend, born from a sarcastically named test roast for a friend who kept asking for it darker
• Long-running customer education program — free weekly demos covering origin, equipment, and brewing
• Direct producer relationships including Finca San Jose in Nicaragua
• Three Richmond cafes plus 100+ wholesale partners

Why it matters

Richmond didn't have much of a specialty scene until Blanchard's started running cuppings and putting bags into Ukrop's; twenty years later it has become Virginia's reference point for craft coffee, with a roastery-as-classroom culture that produced both a regional supply chain and a generation of local baristas.

Production

destoning

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head roaster

Seth Bauserman

color sorting

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roaster machine

Ambex (original); now operates at 1903 Westwood Ave roasting facility (since 2016)

filter equipment

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cupping frequency

Regular in-house cuppings; team travels to origin

roastery location

1903 Westwood Ave, Richmond, VA

espresso equipment

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annual volume tonnes

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Café

Multiple locations including a Broad Street cafe (first opened October 2019), Morris Street near VCU, and Forest Hill Avenue in the Hill Standard mixed-use development

Recognitions

• Best Coffee in Virginia nominee — Food & Wine

Sources

• https://richmondmagazine.com/restaurants-in-richmond/spotlight-david-blanchard/
• https://richmondmagazine.com/restaurants-in-richmond/a-growing-hunger/
• https://sprudge.com/coffee-design-blanchards-coffee-roasting-co-in-richmond-virginia-138252.html
• https://www.grpva.com/news/trade-names-blanchards-coffee-turning-into-regional-force/
• https://urnow.richmond.edu/features/article/-/27533/cool-beans-how-two-spiders-brewed-their-way-into-coffee-entrepreneurship.html