Red Diamond Coffee & Tea

Red Diamond is a five-generation, family-owned coffee and tea company founded in 1906 in Birmingham, Alabama. Originally established as the Donovan Provision Company by William Fitz Donovan, the business quickly evolved into a specialty coffee roaster, with the Red Diamond brand named after what the founder considered the finest gem in existence. Over more than a century of operation, it has grown into one of the most recognized premium coffee and tea manufacturers in the United States.

The company sources its tea leaves globally, selecting fresh-picked leaves from the world's finest tea-growing regions. Only the best parts of the tea leaf are used, resulting in a clean, crisp flavor profile. Tea products are characterized by being free of stems, preservatives, and artificial additives, and naturally contain antioxidants. Red Diamond was the first company in the United States to perfect decaffeinated tea and completely sealed tea bags, a milestone achieved in 1980.

On the coffee side, Red Diamond uses only high-altitude grown, hand-picked, new-crop beans sourced from premier growing regions worldwide. Coffee is batch-roasted using Scolari roasters — the only Scolari tea and coffee manufacturing plant in the United States — with state-of-the-art computer-assisted roasting and blending technology. Freshly roasted coffee is hot-packed to seal in flavor and freshness at the point of production.

The company also produces bottled ready-to-drink (RTD) fresh-brewed tea, a category it entered in the 1990s. By the 2000s, Red Diamond had become the number-one provider of premium fresh-brewed tea globally. Its RTD tea line represents a significant portion of its commercial business, serving both retail and foodservice channels.

Historically, Red Diamond played a notable role in the broader coffee industry: in the 1940s, along with nine other roasters, the company helped form Tenco, which became the largest supplier of instant coffee in the world. This legacy of scale and innovation continues today, with the fifth generation of the founding family now leading the company into its next chapter.

Red Diamond's product portfolio spans roasted ground coffee, tea bags, decaffeinated tea, and ready-to-drink bottled teas. The brand is positioned as a premium offering with a strong emphasis on ingredient quality, sourcing standards, and proprietary manufacturing processes that differentiate it from commodity competitors in the coffee and tea space.