Meet Our Founder

Check out this interview with our founder, Phil, from Voyage Denver:

https://voyagedenver.com/interview/community-highlights-meet-philip-goodlaxson-of-corvus-coffee-roasters

"

Today we’d like to introduce you to Philip Goodlaxson.

Hi Philip, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My wife, Autumn, and I came to Denver nearly 20 years ago after working for several years in Chicago with the intention of starting a coffee business. Here in Arvada, I purchased a small roaster on ebay in 2009 for a few thousand dollars, refurbished, and put in our garage. I ducted it myself with a reciprocating saw from Ace Hardware in my first ever, and last ever, roofing project. We started selling coffee at the Stapleton and Cherry Creek farmer’s markets and there met both a contact for Whole Foods and our first landlords and moved to a small cafe on S Broadway, down the street from where we are today.
I had the intention to work directly with small producers after a mentor suggested we visit some roasters and importers in Norway in 2010. While there, one roaster in particular challenged the emphasis the US held on equipment, “it seems you’re more focused on espresso machine and pourover brand than you are the farmer,” he told me as we talked in his tiny cafe in Oslo.
At the time, this was a keen and accurate observation. I asked for clarification, and he elaborated on their approach towards quality and sustainability – both stemming from working directly with producers in a collaborative way to elevate their coffee from commodity to craft. This lit a fire in me; resonating with my desire to make an impact on people as well as the pursuit of excellence that drew me to coffee in the first place.
I made some initial connections with farmers in Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru – going to all four countries the first year I began roasting; making connections with some farmers we still work with today – also wasting a lot of money and time with others, but the intent was there.
Over the next 16 years I would take advantage of the luck that came my way, meeting mentors and making connections with other roasters and developers to expand our company to 6, soon to be 7, shops, and online & wholesale throughout Denver Metro and the country. The focus on farmers remained the priority as we expanded and we worked to build brands for their farms that are meaningful to our customers and translate into greater pricing power, quality, and sustainability for them. This has remained the core mission and greatest pride in what our team has accomplished. We now work directly in 12 countries, visiting farmers every year to build relationships and tell their stories. Many of these relationships now go back well over a decade and these farmers we work with have not only continued to be transformed into artisans, but are impacting their neighbors through their knowledge and influence.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The constant struggle, which remains the work to be done, is changing the perception of value in coffee. It hasn’t been that long ago since coffee was thought of as a loss leader to a breakfast at a diner. Even though the industry has been transformed a lot since we saw Starbucks spread across the U.S., many people still have rigid notions about what the pinnacle of quality could possibly be and what the price, as a result, should be for a cup of coffee or even a flavored latte. We put in a lot of work in training and giving talking points to our teams for how to address these very rational preconceived notions. And if you had told me the price of coffee today when we started, I would have probably said that there’s no way that we can charge what we charge today (even though it’s become a necessity as the cost of coffee at origin has increased dramatically). This is because more roasters around the world have been successful in improving coffee’s quality, but also increasing the perception of value that people hold for it.
Honestly, overall, I think that being in Denver has been part of our success and that the people of Denver seem to be more curious and receptive to ideas around quality beverages (based on the explosion of craft beer here over the past several decades). While this is the main challenge and remains the main challenge: convincing people to pay a couple dollars more for a product that can not only enhance one of their favorite rituals but impact people in a positive way around the globe, it’s one that I’ve loved taking on and has driven many of our decisions to seek out great illustrators for packing and videographers for origin content etc.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Corvus Coffee Roasters?
In addition to being a boutique coffee brand, Corvus Coffee is a full-service coffee roasting company. We lead with farmer stories, but we provide services such as private label and white labeling, and implement wholesale coffee programs to restaurants and boutique hotels etc, and sell through multiple grocery outlets. Essentially, while we haven’t leaned into actively advertising for all these channels, we can help any business to provide a higher level of coffee experience for customers or employees; impacting coffee farmers in the same way that we do through our cafes and online.
We have a full training department which provides classes and education in a multitude of formats for industry, non-industry, food service, or employee engagement programs. This team is world-class in their knowledge and ability to execute on training programs that are specific to any business that we’re working with.
Ultimately, though, what we’re most proud of is the way that we do business at origin, and how those values translate to how we do business here in the U.S. The transfer of this knowledge that only comes from knowing the farmers we work with and working with them in person, to our partners is our key differentiator. This gives people who work with Corvus the unique ability to tailor coffees for any experience, and empower teams to understand the impact of their work, conveying the same sense of purpose to their customers.

We believe that the pursuit of excellence is worth pursuing in whatever business you have, job you’re in, or work that you have to do; because the pursuit of excellence is ultimately the pursuit of a better version of oneself. We’re built to help any organization do this in whatever way is meaningful to them and their teams.

What were you like growing up?
I grew up in corn country in the middle of Illinois, in a town with fewer than 30,000 people. My family didn’t have TV or any digital sources of entertainment until I was probably 14, so I was mostly outside, climbing trees and playing roller hockey in the culdesac with the kids in my neighborhood. I would always take hobbies to the illogical extreme and had a high interest in the idea of artisan quality – maybe due to the combination of my parent’s emphasis on work ethic and my lack of access to really high quality things. I was also an avid reader and consumed several books a week, which served me well once I was an adult learning about business and leadership."

Also in The Tattered Journal