Kicking Horse Coffee

Kicking Horse's own official company description, used in their current press materials: "Kicking Horse Coffee started roasting beans in a garage 28 years ago, in the middle of the Canadian Rockies. Today, the garage is a bit bigger... Fueled by our rebel-with-a-heart-of-gold attitude, we vow to always do the right thing, even if it's the hard way. That means bucking shortcuts, chasing the harvest around the globe, and roasting every organic, fair trade [bean with intention]."

The real story behind that: Elana Rosenfeld, a Toronto native, and her then-husband Leo Johnson moved to Invermere, BC chasing mountain life after university, ran a small café, got frustrated with the lack of good coffee locally, and started roasting beans in their garage in 1996 — against her own mother's skepticism ("What are you two schmucks going to do, sell coffee out of your garage?").