Good Things Happen Over Coffee: How Two Entrepreneurs Brewed Success
By: Nicole Keeny
Strong. Bold. Energizing. The words we often use to describe coffee also happen to define the cofounders and co-owners of Alpha Coffee, Carl and Lori Churchill. This entrepreneurial husband-wife team represents what you get when you brew passion with discipline and dedication.
As a 21-year U.S. Army combat veteran, Carl sat down with his wife Lori over a cup of delicious craft coffee roasted by a family member to discuss their future, brainstorm business ideas, and determine what to do next. “In mid-2010, we found ourselves deep into the Great Recession, and the startup I worked for had just gone bankrupt,” Carl says. “Lori had a corporate massage business that also got crushed by the Great Recession. After no luck finding a ‘normal job’ due to hiring freezes and deepening unemployment across the country, we realized we were caught in a financial ambush and were going to bleed out unless we did something bold.”
From that initial discussion over coffee, their idea continued to percolate, leading the Churchills to start Alpha Coffee on September 11, 2010, in their basement, selling freshly roasted coffee online for home delivery. “We decided to cash in our life savings and start our own business and simultaneously take charge of our own financial and professional future,” Carl says. Carl and Lori say they “subscribe to the concept of ready, aim, fire, which basically means you must have a plan, but you can’t spend too much time in the planning phase. At some point, you have to pull the trigger and then make adjustments as you go.”
And pull the trigger they did. Carl and Lori went on to establish multiple brick-and-mortar locations in Utah, and they just opened a new location in downtown Salt Lake City in May. “When we opened our first coffee shop location about six years after starting the company as an online coffee business, we really didn’t know what we didn’t know. In fact, I was convinced we could just figure it out and build it out ourselves,” Carl says. “But Lori convinced me that we needed to engage a professional to help us design the layout . . . From that exercise of working with a professional who’d designed hundreds of shops, we established our workflow, basic layout, equipment needs, and footprint.” They went on to broaden the brand by expanding into wholesale in 2020.
That back-and-forth in their partnership is part of what makes this duo so dynamic. Known as the Chief Coffee Officer and the Duchess of Coffee, respectively, Carl and Lori run one of the first veteran-owned coffee companies—together. “Lori and I are 100% co-owners, and this business would not have succeeded without both of us working together and working hard to make it successful. Early on, we had a discussion about unity of command and how we would split up the workload. We decided together that I would take on the ‘CEO’ role but that all major decisions would be made together,” Carl says. The pair developed their roles within the business partnership based on their individual skill sets, experience, and passions, with Carl working in the position of CFO as well as sales and marketing and Lori taking on customer service, research, and human resources responsibilities.
Both Carl and Lori lead Alpha Coffee with principles they gleaned from their time in the military. Together they established the Alpha Coffee mission statement, “Awesome Coffee, Be a Warrior, Have Fun, and Give Back,” as a reflection of the principles Carl and Lori live by and build into their business. “Probably the most obvious thing we both got from our time in and around the military was embracing the warrior ethos and that never-quit mentality,” Carl says. “[A] big part of the warrior mentality is that there are ups and downs in life and in business, and you can’t just give in to these challenges . . . You have to be willing to be bold, take calculated risks, never quit, work extremely hard, make extraordinary sacrifices, and aggressively and relentlessly make it happen.”
Another aspect of their leadership they learned from the military is to lead by example. Carl says, “In our business, you will see Lori and I on the line, shoulder to shoulder with our team, taking out the garbage, sweeping and mopping the floor, and doing everything else. This shows our team that we are not absentee owners and that we don’t ask them to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves.” For instance, Lori herself trains the baristas on how to make the perfect cup of coffee, from a classic cappuccino to a doppio espresso, the Churchill’s particular favorite (though Carl and Lori will say that asking them to name their favorite coffee is like asking what child they love the most). Ultimately, they set the standard for Alpha Coffee by demonstrating an “openness and willingness to embrace people and find common ground,” Carl says. “We say good things happen over coffee, and we love that we are creating community within our shops and within our company that allows for that.”
In addition to their warrior mentality, strong leadership, and focus on teamwork, these entrepreneurs are all about giving back. Every purchase made at Alpha Coffee contributes to their Coffee for Troops and Grounds for Good programs, donating over 10% of profits toward charitable organizations. In total, Alpha Coffee has donated over 21,000 bags of coffee to deployed troops and over $100k to nonprofits. “When you have success, it feels good to be able to give back some of that. We established our Grounds for Good program with three focuses: veterans, planet, and community,” Carl says. “We didn’t do this to help grow the business; we did it because we felt it was the right thing to do. But the interesting thing is that when you give back, you get so much more in return—not just good feelings, but the support of people who see what you were doing and the support of your team who sees that the business is not just about making as much money as possible and cashing out, but also about being good citizens and good members of the community. It’s really win-win-win.”
And Alpha Coffee is winning. Carl and Lori’s grit has seen them through ups and downs in the market and through the unparalleled events of the pandemic. Carl says, “Our first year we did $17,000 in revenue, and over the next several years we had big successes and not so great years, but 10 years later we hit $1.7 million in revenue.” As entrepreneurs who have walked through times of great uncertainty and come out successfully on the other side, Carl and Lori truly believe that “taking the long-term approach is the only way to build a successful and sustainable business.”
In the end, however, after spending their workdays with Alpha Coffee, Carl and Lori work hard to establish a strong work-life balance. “We say life’s too short for bad coffee, but life is also too short to just work and not have fun . . . It’s so important to offset the stress of running your own business,” Carl says. They intentionally make space for themselves to spend time with their first grandson; to go skiing, camping, and horseback riding; and to sit down with family and friends over a good cup of coffee. Because, as Carl and Lori have found, good things happen there.
Interested in trying some Alpha Coffee for yourself? The Alpha team sells their awesome coffee online through Amazon, Walmart.com, and the alpha.coffee website. Alpha Coffee will also deliver right to customers’ doorsteps with their resupply subscription.
