Brand Interview with Canyon Coffee Co-founder, Casey Wojtalewicz
By Ella Hackworth
All Images sourced from Canyon Coffee
Welcome to the mot intentional and dreamy world of coffee. If you didn’t think your morning routine could get any more mindful, step into the world of Canyon Coffee.
What sparked the start of Canyon Coffee?
It was really the culmination of a years long montage, of sorts. It started with Ally and I meeting, back when I lived in Beachwood Canyon here in LA. We were both traveling for work at the time — Ally as a model, myself as a musician. What began as a simple mutual appreciation of coffee grew into this shared passion that provided a connection for our long-distance relationship. Finding great shops in the towns we traveled to became a favorite pastime, and the simple act of making coffee for each other became a cherished ritual. In time, I started working in the industry as a barista, we became friends with our friend and now partner, James, and one day in early 2016 inspiration struck while we were hiking (in a canyon—where else?). We launched Canyon Coffee a few months later and it’s just been real organic growth since then.
I know travel is a huge part of your life. How does Canyon Coffee reflect that passion?
Travel is an integral part of Canyon, both in regard to our creative process and, subsequently, the outward facing brand. When we feel stagnant or lacking in new ideas and innovation, our go-to move is just to get out of town. Either a road trip or a flight to somewhere new. Breaking the routine and immersing ourselves in new surroundings or new cultures always gets the wheels turning and seems to lead to new ideas.
As travel was also key to developing our passion for coffee, we wanted to find ways to share that through Canyon, and making free downloadable travel guides was a fun way to do that. When we visit a new city, we’ll often map out our days based on what coffee shop we’ll start at and go from there. Walking as much as possible from shop to shop and stopping at all the sights and unexpected marvels that pop up along the way.
What is your connection to the Earth and how does that tie in to your coffee rituals, brewing process, etc?
For me personally, I feel very lucky to have grown up in a rural, agrarian part of the country—an area I found to be as beautiful then as I do now, and one that fosters an inherent connection to the Earth. It’s not that it filled me up for life, but it established a means to feeling grounded. Now, whenever I’ve had too much city or am feeling a bit without direction, I just get out to the desert, or the woods, or open country for a few days and I get back in touch with what I find to be the fullest version of myself.
The coffee ritual is like a small dose of that groundedness feeling. It’s a moment I look forward to every morning to slow down, breathe deep, and lose myself to the mindfulness of a little practice. Grinding the coffee and making that first pour fills you with such a wonderful smell, and I like thinking about and visualizing the plant where the cherries that produced these beans came from, and the mountain that it stands, living and growing on today.
How do you view Canyon Coffee’s sustainability journey?
The sustainability effort is a constant process. To me, sustainability must take into account economic and social impact as well as environmental. It’s been a constant priority for us from the beginning, and our commitment to being Certified Organic from day one was a key part of that. But I feel there are so many ways we can continue to improve across many channels. Paying good premiums and ensuring good livelihoods for the farmers we buy coffee from is one of them. Removing cardboard and paper waste internally, using truly compostable materials for shipping and packaging (we’ve never used plastic or non-biodegradable packing materials).
Product packaging is a big one for us, and one we’ve been working on. There’s—unfortunately—so much greenwashing in packaging, and we’ve been ready to move forward on packaging materials we thought were “green” and truly compostable only to find they could only be processed in industrial compost facilities, the odds of our bags winding up in would be under 1%. That’s greenwashing. When it comes to becoming a more sustainable company, we’re more interested in making actual progress than being able to market something that’s not true!
Do you have a preferred brewing method?
Pour overs! The pour over ritual is really at the heart of Canyon Coffee. It was when we first made a pour over at home that we realized how much power we have at home to impact the quality and flavor of the coffee we’re brewing.
How do you view roasts at Canyon Coffee?
For us at Canyon, we typically think more in terms of origin! Lately, my favorite has been our Ethiopian. But I also love the microlots we bring in by individual farmers, and have also really been enjoying coffees processed via carbonic maceration — where the cherries ferment in absence of oxygen for at least several days. The aromatics and flavors of these coffees are really compounded and it can make for a really fun and vibrant cup.
On roasting… At Canyon, we don’t think in terms of Light, Medium or Dark. Some roasters choose a roast profile and plug a coffee into it. We’re the opposite. When we find a great coffee, we develop a roast profile to bring out its unique terroir-driven flavors. So I’d say we don’t roast our coffees too light or too dark — we’re going for an ample development time in the roaster that gives the coffee good solubility, so it’s easy to extract and make taste great! We’re trying to give it that perfect roast so that it’s caramelly, sweet, balanced and smooth!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ella Hackworth is a Brand Account Manager and Contributing Writer for SISTAIN and has a background in design, dance, and visual arts. She celebrates her love of nature, beauty, and connection through her passion for living mindfully and sustainably.
