Our Story

In the early 1970s, Seattle, Washington was experiencing a quiet revolution. It began with a few small coffee shops that were roasting and selling their own coffees. Espresso machines were beginning to appear more frequently around town. Larry T. Challain, a young towboat chief engineer, visited one of these espresso cafes in Seattle in 1977 and emerged with a firm idea of a new career to pursue roasting and selling exceptional specialty coffees. Along with his wife, Cherie, Larry was firm in the idea of creating a work environment where the couple's interest in coffee and their commitment to absolute quality could be observed.

For several years, Larry made extensive business plans. He interviewed Seattle coffee pioneers Jim Reynolds of Starbucks and Jim Stewart of Seattle's Best Coffee and was encouraged in his plan to sell fresh roasted coffee beans in his own café. In one of the few coffee history books that were available at the time, Larry found the story of Kaldi and the Dancing Goats and it struck him as a great business motif. Traveling in Europe, Larry had loved visiting the legendary cafes such as Café de Procope, Lloyd's Coffee House and Caffe Florian and thought a coffee retailer called The Dancing Goats would reflect both the coffeehouse tradition and the origin story of coffee.

Larry and Cherie opened the Dancing Goats Espresso Company in Olympia, Washington in August 1988. They began with a café that featured espresso drinks and desserts. Two years later the couple purchased an Olympia specialty coffee roaster called Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters that featured a small coffee house and a fledgling wholesale division with 10 local accounts. Based on his careful business plan, Larry was ready to grow the business and soon took on a larger roastery space and started acquiring accounts from across the Northwest and soon, the entire nation.

From the beginning, Larry and Cherie were committed to ultimate quality as they selected coffees whose distinctive characteristics could be carefully coaxed out in the roasting process. They traveled frequently to see coffee growing at origin and worked to achieve a stellar reputation in the specialty coffee industry. Creating long term partnerships with vendors, growers and employees has been the hallmark of this ever-growing company's business success. The value of these long-term connections has been a distinction that has brought many wholesale customers to purchase Batdorf & Bronson's coffees.

Since 1990, Batdorf & Bronson Coffee Roasters® has grown to include a roastery in Atlanta, Georgia that opened in 1994, a new roasting facility in Olympia in 1998, and six retail and licensed locations. As one of the only specialty roasters with roasting facilities on both coasts, Batdorf & Bronson is a leader in delivering coffee freshness to its customers across the U.S. The company's success has been based on the vision of total quality that Larry and Cherie Challain created together when they were setting out in their coffee careers and continues today in every batch of artisan-roasted Batdorf & Bronson coffee.