Coffee Sketcher

Saza Coffee

Properties3
descriptionThe family roastery in small-town Ibaraki, Japan that keeps buying the world's most expensive coffee — lead buyer on both the first $1,000-a-pound lot in 2019 and the $10,013-a-kilo record in 2024.
tagsorganization, japan, roaster, geisha, prices
aliasesSaza, サザコーヒー, Saza Coffee Co., Ltd.

6 min read

Saza Coffee

Saza Coffee (サザコーヒー) is a Japanese coffee company founded in 1942 and based in Hitachinaka, a seaside city in Ibaraki Prefecture about two hours north of Tokyo. It roasts, retails, and runs its own cafés, and it owns coffee farms in Colombia (Wikipedia (Japanese), サザコーヒー, accessed 2026-07-23).

It matters to this wiki for one reason: when the world record price for coffee gets broken, Saza is very often the name at the top of the bid sheet. It led the buying group for the first lot ever to pass 10,013 a kilogram. Both lots came from the same farm — Elida Estate, run by the Lamastus family in Boquete, Panama.

That makes Saza the closest thing the ultra-premium market has to a habitual record-setter, in contrast to one-off headline buyers like Julith Coffee (Dubai, 2025) or JD.com (China, 2025).

The company

AttributeDetail
Founded1942 (12 October)
Head officeHitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan
PresidentTaro Suzuki (since June 2020)
Capital¥25.6 million
Revenue¥2.652 billion (year ending March 2022)
Employees262 (April 2023)
Stores18 — 11 in Ibaraki, 1 in Saitama, 6 in Tokyo
Own farmsColombia — 5 ha in Cauca (1996); “Tres Edgaritos,” 21 ha (2011)

All figures above are from the Japanese-language Wikipedia entry (サザコーヒー, accessed 2026-07-23).

Owning farms as well as buying at auction is the unusual part. Most companies that chase record lots are pure roasters; Saza sits on both sides of the trade at once, growing its own coffee in Colombia while bidding for other people’s in Panama.

To verify

The engine report for this note gives “20+ stores” and dates the Colombian farms to 1998. The fetched Wikipedia entry says 18 stores and 1996 for the first farm. Neither is confirmed against Saza’s own corporate filings, and store counts go stale quickly. Use the fetched figures, but check the company site before quoting.

The record purchases

2019 — the first coffee over $1,000 a pound

At the 2019 Best of Panama auction, an Elida Geisha Green Tip Natural ASD lot from Elida Estate scored 95.25 and sold for $1,029 per pound — the first time any coffee had crossed four figures a pound at public auction. Saza Coffee was credited by the producers for leading the buying consortium; the rest of the group included Klatch Coffee (California), Willoughbys Coffee & Tea (Connecticut), and Dragonfly Coffee Roasters (Colorado) (AgroNosotros, 2019, accessed 2026-07-23; Global Coffee Report, 2019, accessed 2026-07-23).

“ASD” is the producer’s own processing code for that lot; “green tip” describes a Geisha plant selection whose new leaf shoots come out green rather than bronze.

2024 — $10,013 a kilogram

At the 2024 Best of Panama auction on 7 August, Saza was the primary buyer of Elida Geisha Natural “Torre” — 20 kg for 10,013 per kilogram, a new world record at the time. As in 2019 the purchase was shared: named co-buyers included Grand Cru Coffee (China), OKLAO Specialty Coffee, BREW BOYY CREW, Ruber.Roastery (Korea), Pebble Coffee buying for Simple Kaffa, Paradise Coffee Roasters, and Ruliweb (South Korea) (Casa Solution, 2024, accessed 2026-07-23; LatAm Reports, accessed 2026-07-22).

YearLotScorePriceSaza’s role
2019Elida Geisha Green Tip Natural ASD95.25$1,029/lbLead buyer of the consortium
2024Elida Geisha Natural “Torre” (20 kg)—4,542/lb)Primary buyer, shared with 7 others

Both entries also appear on the Elida Estate and Best of Panama results archive notes.

To verify

The claim that anchors this topic — that Saza has won or co-won top Best of Panama lots nearly every year since 2008, missing only 2014 — rests on a single marketing blog (Japanese Coffee Co.), which could not be fetched (rate-limited, 2026-07-23). Only 2019 and 2024 are independently documented here. Do not describe Saza as an “every year since 2008” buyer until the intervening years are checked against official results.

To verify

A separate frequently repeated claim is that Saza took the top lot at the inaugural 2020 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence at $185/lb. That figure is single-sourced to roaster blogs and is already flagged as unconfirmed on Cup of Excellence records by country. If true it would show Saza’s record-buying reaches beyond Panama — which is exactly why it needs a real source.

Buying the whole group in

The pattern in both records is the same and worth understanding, because it is how most modern record lots are actually paid for.

A winning lot is often only 20 kg — roughly a single bag. One buyer paying $200,000 for it would have almost nothing left to sell after a few hundred cups. So a buying consortium forms: several roasters, usually across several countries, agree in advance to split the lot and the bill, and one of them places the bid. Saza’s distinguishing habit is being the one who organises and fronts the group rather than joining someone else’s.

For the roasters involved, the appeal is a few kilograms of the most talked-about coffee on earth plus a share of the announcement. For Elida Estate, it means the entire lot clears at one price. For the market, it means a headline number that reflects eight buyers’ combined willingness to pay, not one — a caveat worth remembering whenever a record price is quoted as evidence of what “the market” will bear. See Premiumisation.

What it does with the coffee

Saza pours it. Panama Geisha is sold by the cup at ¥3,000 (roughly $20) at the Hitachinaka flagship and at the company’s Marunouchi KITTE store in Tokyo (Wikipedia (Japanese), accessed 2026-07-23).

That is the strategic point. A twenty-dollar cup is expensive but not unreachable — a train ride and a splurge, not an event. Where Julith Coffee turned its record lot into ~$980 servings for a handful of people and JD.com turned its lot into a national advertising campaign, Saza’s version is a small chain of ordinary Japanese cafés that happen to serve the world’s most expensive coffee at the counter.

Sources

  1. Saza Coffee — official site (サザコーヒー) — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. Best of Panama — official auction site — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. Lamastus Family Estates Auction — Elida Estate’s own site — accessed 2026-07-23
  4. Wikipedia (Japanese) — サザコーヒー — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. Global Coffee Report — Elida Estate Natural ASD Geisha makes Best of Panama auction history — accessed 2026-07-23
  6. AgroNosotros — Elida Estate Gesha earns $1,029 per pound — accessed 2026-07-23
  7. Casa Solution — $4,500 a pound for Boquete coffee? Yes, really — accessed 2026-07-23
  8. LatAm Reports — Geisha: Panama’s luxury coffee sets new price record — accessed 2026-07-23
  9. Japanese Coffee Co. — Saza Coffee: everything you need to know — accessed 2026-07-23 (could not be fetched; rate-limited)

Graph View

Backlinks