Growth, Risk, and Ritual with Canyon Coffee's Founders Ally Walsh and Casey Wojtalewicz
Join us for our conversation with Ally Walsh and Casey Wojtalewicz, founders of Canyon Coffee in Los Angeles, California, about daily rituals, entering the coffee industry, and building community.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dear coffee lovers,
We got on a call with Ally Walsh and Casey Wojtalewicz, the partners behind Canyon Coffee, for a relaxed, inspiring chat. The dynamic between this industrious duo is strong, with each founder having a clear focus based on their expertise. With Ally’s creative vision, and Casey’s scrappy, community-first approach, the two have built a thoughtful coffee company in Los Angeles, California. We’re excited to share their story!
Grab a black coffee and enjoy this conversation with Ally and Casey. 👀
Jon: What did your morning look like today? Any rituals or routines?
Casey: I was on daddy duty this morning. I got our son up, made oatmeal, and got him out the door—but absolutely no morning starts without coffee. Our passion for coffee really took off when Ally and I discovered the pour-over ritual years ago. That said, we’re parents now, I’ve got a Moccamaster, we use the scale, we’re drinking our year-round Ethiopian every morning, same recipe: 38 grams, fill it up to the 6, medium coarse grind.
Then, after I dropped our son off at preschool, I met with Ally at our coffee shop. Tuesdays are our day to sync with the manager and go over everything. Exciting news, we just signed a new lease, we’re expanding to New York. You heard it here first.
Ally: I got to sleep in a bit. I wasn’t on mom duty today, which was nice. I had coffee in bed and did some emails before heading to the shop to meet Casey for our morning meeting.
Jon: When you think about the early days of Canyon Coffee, was there a moment in particular that made you feel like, “We’re really doing this”?
Casey: I always tell people about this one time early on, about a month in. We started a little different. We were able to roast in someone else’s roastery, so we were able to start with pretty much no money. We were a musician / model couple. We started out selling wholesale and direct-to-consumer. I remember getting the check for our first wholesale order, which was for 8 retail bags to a little boutique, and the check was for maybe like $108. That moment made me realize, like oh God, we either have to quit now, or sell so much coffee if we ever want to actually be able to pay to live in LA. Having started the business without an exit plan, that was the first time I started to develop the long-term vision, out of necessity.
Ally: For me, it was five years later when we signed a lease for a 12,000 square-foot factory downtown to roast our coffee and set up our office. That’s when I was like, wow, we are really committed to this. We’re going to have to roast a lot of coffee to pay this rent, and to hire people, and do all the things we’d been wanting to do for so long.
Huey: Have any skills or lessons from your early careers in modeling (Ally) and music (Casey) carried over into the coffee industry?
Casey: Yes. Actually, before music, I wound up in Los Angeles as a Community Organizer. I don’t have plans for this, but, if I ever were to write a book about business, it would probably have a title like, “Everything I Learned About Business, I Learned as a Musician and/or Community Organizer.”
Because with music, and with community organizing, there’s one asset in common you don’t have: money. If you have a goal, and you need people, you have to think outside the box. You have to view the potential in people and think about ‘what else do we have that’s not money?’ Someone has a car…or knows a lawyer…and then you piece it all together.
That can be really empowering, because you can’t really get anyone to join your team unless you can inspire them. You have to give them the why. “Start with why” is now common business adage, but that’s live or die if you’re an organizer, and I’d say the same for a musician. You’re united around creating something. So both of those former careers gave me scrappiness and thinking-outside-the-box-ness.
And then when Ally was modeling, I’d sometimes be lucky enough to tag along to the shoots with her. Speaking from my perspective, I’d say that her time in that industry had to be formative for developing her eye and her skill with imagery and aesthetic. She’s made the Canyon brand into what it is. You kind of can see our role delineation there with those two backgrounds. Me with shoestring scrappiness and her with the vision.
Ally: Yes. I was very much excited to not do modeling anymore and launch my own thing. Being on set, working with photographers, art directors, and creative directors, I was excited to be on the other side of things. I was constantly observing and learning. Ultimately I realized I wanted to create a brand, a product.
Jon: Favorite coffee shops you’ve visited together?
Casey: I think we have to shout out Tandem in Portland, Maine. Ally found it first—which was often how it worked for us. I’d be on tour she’d be traveling for work, we’d find great spots, and then eventually we’d visit them together. But Tandem was founded by two people, who were actually the initial baristas sent to New York by James Freeman to open Blue Bottle in New York.
They’ve got this epic gas station bakery. When I think of going there in the late fall, the windows are fogged up, they’re playing records, they’ve got amazing pastries, and at the time we visited, their mugs said ‘gluten and butter’. Being from LA, I just loved it. They’re great people.
They were also one of the first roasters to work with Swift Cup for instant coffee. We asked about it when we saw it on the shelves, and they connected us with Nate at Swift, which resulted in us in being one of the first ten roasters to work with them as well.
Ally: I still love The Mill in San Francisco so much. It’s one of my top spots. Then in Paris, Dreamin’ Man serves some of the best coffee I’ve ever had. I was just there a couple of months ago. We also love Acid in Berlin too.
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