By Alana Snyder
Dixon Coffee Company, a quaint, modern building in the parking lot of Knecht Home Center was truly a labor of love. Owner/operator Kayleigh Dixon, a barista of nine years, always dreamt of owning her own business doing what she loves. Her husband, Christopher – an architectural engineer – designed and literally built the coffee shop from the ground up (“with help from friends and family”).
Spreading their passion for people, homemade organic goods and fair trade coffee, this couple is getting back to their roots.
How has business been since you opened this fall?
K: It’s been really good. There’s a big demand in the health industry right now. People are really looking for better options, and that’s where we’re going with this. We want to still serve up some yummy stuff, but have better options.
Tell me about what your coffee shop has that other shops might not.
K: For one thing, our coffee beans are all fair trade organic – organic being as little use of pesticides in the beans as possible and fair trade as a global standpoint.
C: All farmers get paid equally. They all have kids and are trying to make a living, too. Instead of telling them ‘what are you going to do for us,’ they say ‘what is a fair price for your hard work?’ It’s more about people than actually making dollar bills.
Where do you get your beans from?
K: It’s out of Washington with a company called Grounds for Change. We started planning this idea a year before we built, and it took us that long to source all of our ingredients and how exactly we were going to do everything.
C: We were experimenting in our basement with a little espresso machine [laughed]. We had all these companies sending us beans.
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