Approved Coffee Roasters — Canada's Artisan Third-Wave Standard

What every roaster on this list promised

Each roaster below confirmed, in writing, that all seven of these are true of their roastery — the date beside each name is when they did. Every year we ask them to confirm it again. If one stops being true, the listing comes down.

  1. We buy and roast current crop-year green coffee. Nothing held past its harvest year, however it is described. “Aged”, “vintage”, “rested”, “mature” and “cellared” are marketing words for old coffee, not a style of it.
  2. We roast specialty-grade 100% Arabica — 80 points or higher on the original cupping system.
  3. We do not blend Robusta into anything we sell as specialty, in espresso or in filter.
  4. We print a roast date on every bag — the day it was roasted, not a best-before or expiry date.
  5. We do not sell artificially flavoured coffee under our specialty line.
  6. We can tell you where a coffee came from, and we do so honestly rather than through marketing language.
  7. We roast on our own equipment. We are a roaster, not a reseller of someone else's coffee under our label.

16 approved roasters. The full pledge, and the one for businesses serving coffee, is here.

Why this list exists

We have never played favourites — but we do maintain a list of coffee roasters that meet our internal criteria for third-wave artisan standards. This list exists to publicize and reward roaster businesses that uphold the banner of craft coffee.

The standard is Canadian. The list is open to the world. CBI Approval was written here, is governed here, and carries the name of a Canadian institute — but a roaster in Portland or Melbourne who meets it is as approved as a roaster in Prince George. We would like “meets the Canadian standard” to mean something to a coffee drinker anywhere, the way it already does for a few other coffee countries.

Just to be clear: we don't sell coffee and receive nothing in the form of kickbacks, commissions, or political favours for maintaining this list. We simply want café owners and coffee lovers to spend their money on genuinely great coffee — and this list is genuinely great coffee.

The biggest question we get from new and established coffee shop owners is which coffee roaster should they carry — for retail whole bean, batch brew, and espresso. This list is our honest answer.

This is a selective list. Roasters can be removed when found not to be upholding the standard. If you believe a roaster on this list no longer qualifies, contact us directly. We will never publicize rejections — all results are held in full confidence. Removal decisions are made by the Approved Business Committee, made up of coffee professional peers, by formal vote.

Interested in becoming CBI Approved? → Review the standards and submit your application here

What this list is not

Nobody has tasted every roaster in the country, and we are not pretending otherwise. A list naming a handful of roasters is never the result of a complete search — it is the result of who happened to get noticed.

So this one is built the other way round. A roaster asks to be considered and confirms in writing that every line of the pledge above is true of their roastery. There is no ranking, no best, no order, and nothing is scored except the standard itself.

We do not inspect anyone, and we are not going to claim we do. A roaster tells us the truth and we publish what they said, which puts it in front of the coffee shop owners and customers deciding whether to buy. Every blue moon we will buy a bag, or ask for some to come to a class, but that is a spot check rather than a system. The real check is a customer who notices the difference between what is written on this page and what is in the bag. If that is you — no roast date on the bag, a flavoured coffee sold as specialty, anything that doesn't match the pledge — email us a photo. That is how a listing actually comes down.

It is also not complete. There are excellent roasters in Canada who have simply not applied yet, and we would rather say so than imply we have been everywhere.

📍 View all approved roasters on a map

Not every roaster has a Google Maps listing, so the map shows most of this page rather than all of it. The list below is the complete one.

Jump to: British Columbia · Alberta · Manitoba · Ontario · Quebec · Yukon

Canada

British Columbia

Alberta

Manitoba

Ontario

Quebec

Yukon

Where We Don't Yet Have a Roaster

The bar does not move with the border. Current-crop green coffee, specialty-grade 100% Arabica, a roast date on every bag, and sourcing you can explain honestly to a customer — the same in Halifax, Portland, or Melbourne.

Every roaster on this list is currently in Canada, for the simple reason that Canada is where our labs and our graduates are, and so far that is who has applied. Within Canada we have nobody yet in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland & Labrador, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut. Outside Canada the list is open and empty.

If you roast to this standard, wherever you are, we would like to hear from you.

The Mark

CBI Approved Roaster seal

Every roaster on this list receives this seal — as a sticker for the window, in the mail at our cost wherever they are, and as digital files for their website, their socials and their coffee bags. The files sit permanently at canadianbaristainstitute.com/pages/approved-logo, free, with a usage guide beside them.

If you see this mark on a bag or in a window, the business should be on this page. If it isn't, the mark is being used without approval, and we would like to know — tell us.

Our Other Lists

This page covers roasters only. You can also browse our Approved Coffee list of cafés, bakeries and other businesses serving coffee, and the organizations that trust us with their people.

Become a CBI Approved Roaster

If you are an artisan coffee roaster and believe your product meets the Canadian third-wave standard, we invite you to apply — wherever in the world you roast. The process is rigorous, the list is selective, and approval carries real weight with coffee shop owners who trust CBI's recommendations. Review the standards and apply here.