Author’s Bio:
Ally Walsh co-founded Canyon Coffee in 2016, alongside Casey Wojtalewicz. Together, they transformed a passion for specialty coffee into a thriving DTC brand with a robust wholesale business and café in Los Angeles. Ally’s eye for design allowed the duo to create a thriving community-driven business rich with culture.
When I walked into the Venice General Store with our first bags of Canyon Coffee, asking them to take a chance on us, I had no clue if they would sell. The owner agreed to take us on. I think, partly, they felt bad for us—like, “Oh my God, these guys have no idea what a hill it is to climb.” When I got that first check, reality hit hard. I thought, “We either have to quit now or we have to sell so much coffee if we’re going to lead a comfortable life in LA.”
Casey and I weren’t coffee industry insiders. I was modeling; he was a touring musician. We’d started Canyon Coffee because we loved the ritual of making pour-overs when we were finally home after being on the road. But we had zero industry credibility and virtually no capital, just $5,000 in savings and a credit card with a $10,000 limit.
We knew we couldn’t compete with established roasters who were buying espresso machines for coffee shops, sending techs out for service calls, or leveraging existing relationships. Instead, we went where coffee wasn’t being sold but where we thought it should be. That approach became the foundation of growing Canyon from those first four bags to a seven-figure business, without any outside investment for the first four years.
Below I’ll share the philosophy and approach we took to make Canyon Coffee a successful business.
Designing your product for adjacent spaces
When defining Canyon Coffee’s visual identity, we asked a simple question: If Georgia O’Keeffe had a coffee company, what would it look like? After visiting her home in New Mexico and seeing a Chemex resting naturally among her belongings, we understood that coffee could feel quiet, intentional, and at home in everyday life.
At the time, much of specialty coffee leaned heavily masculine, dark palettes, industrial cues. We wanted something understated, warm, and timeless—designed not to dominate a counter, but to belong on it. More importantly, we designed Canyon for boutique lifestyle stores rather than cafés at the time. Kraft bags were chosen intentionally, imagined alongside ceramics, textiles, and books. not just competing coffee labels. That framing allowed us to enter retail environments where coffee hadn’t previously existed, simply because no one had designed for them.
That design philosophy opened doors that industry experience couldn’t have. These boutique stores sold everything around coffee, but not coffee itself, partly because no one was designing for that environment.
Starting small and proving value before scaling
Those first accounts literally started with four bags. We’d go in, make pour-overs for shop owners, and ask them to give us a chance. We did a ton of events, too, like Christmas market pop-ups, craft fairs, or even just at small boutiques on weekends. We were everywhere— making coffee and building relationships.
As trust built, those four bags became 12 bags at a time, and eventually more. We never pushed for big orders upfront; instead, we let the relationships grow organically. The shop owners could see that their customers actually wanted our coffee, that the bags looked right in their space, and that we showed up consistently.
We were filling every bag by hand at our kitchen table with a scale and funnel. Once a week we’d drive about an hour and a half up to Oxnard to pick up the beans we were roasting on another company’s equipment. It was a total grind, but starting small meant we could learn and adjust without massive financial risk.
Leveraging authentic connections
Here’s something that seems obvious but was crucial to our success: We only approached stores we genuinely loved. These weren’t just potential accounts; they were businesses that had inspired us to start our own company in the first place. We had a relationship with General Store because we’d lived in Venice for 10 years and had been shopping there, and that authenticity mattered. We weren’t going in with a polished sales pitch. We were neighbors and customers saying, “We made this thing we love, and we think it would fit beautifully in your space.” That’s a completely different conversation than a sales rep trying to place product.
Even as we’ve grown, this approach hasn’t changed. Our lawyer? I met him making coffee at a random expo. Our first major hire came from fashion, but she loved what we’d built and wanted to be part of it. Our accountant, to this day, was the partner of another brand we were friends with who had begun dabbling into bookkeeping. Everything grew from authentic connections, not networking strategy.
Accepting that growth will be slower but more sustainable
We didn’t pay ourselves for the first four years. Casey was side-hustling search engine optimization while I was still modeling. We went from zero to a million dollars in sales over those four years with just that initial $15,000 investment.
It was slow, but in hindsight we grew between 30% to 50% year over year. But the pace meant we really learned the business. We understood our costs, our margins, what worked, and what didn’t. We experienced being told “No” countless times and learned how to persevere. When we finally did take investment to build our own roasting facility, we had proof of what we’d built. That’s what made people trust us and let us keep full control.
The boutique strategy took longer than trying to break into major accounts would have, if we’d even been able to break in at all. By the time COVID hit, we had about 8,000 highly engaged email subscribers who we’d built relationships with through our newsletters—including features on creatives we admired and free travel guides. When wholesale accounts closed, we made up all that business with direct-to-consumer sales, which wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been dependent on traditional coffee distribution channels.
Nine years later, we have our own roasting facility, a successful café in Echo Park, and we’re about to open another location in Brooklyn, New York. We’re finally getting into some of those larger accounts we once dreamed about. Our brand identity though, the one we built in those early boutique stores, is still what makes Canyon special.
The gap between where your product is and where it should be isn’t a limitation—we saw it as our opportunity. When you can’t compete where everyone else is, try a different approach. Catch our full Shopify Masters interview on YouTube to discover how we opened the café and what’s coming next for Canyon.
