OUR STORY

Some of the best coffee plants come from being grown in the mountains at high altitudes - more struggle, more pressure, more challenges create a stronger, complex crop. Our founder GREG BUCHHEISTER was raised on the mountains. As a champion ski racer in Winter Park, Colorado he learned his life lessons on the slopes: the constant pursuit of excellence, the rewards of taking risks, that luck favors the prepared, and that sometimes to open doors, you just have to take the sledgehammer to the wall yourself. In 1998, while skiing and working in an Italian restaurant, Greg created his own opportunities by importing coffee from Italy, it was time to do coffee differently. After a trip to India (yes, India) Buchheister hit the open road in search of the perfect spot for his new concept. He landed in Truckee, California, an area he loved visiting over the years to see his ski racing friends. COFFEEBAR WAS BORN IN OCTOBER 2010 on a back street in Truckee in an old tin garage. With its rustic modern design and a strong belief in local, high quality food and sustainable practices, Coffeebar transformed Jibboom Street into a bustling haven for the community of Tahoe’s north shore. But nothing that is easy is ever worth doing and challenges are where you grow. After three bad winters and the constant seasonal swings in Tahoe and it was time to expand into a more consistent market. Nestled in Midtown Reno, Coffeebar opened in early 2014 and has since become an institution to the neighborhood and the Reno community as a whole. “We brought specialty coffee to Reno in a way that it hadn’t been executed before. Free of pretension and full of heart,” says Buchheister. Coffeebar continues to grow, expanding to a bakery in Truckee, a store in the Village at Squaw Valley, another in Menlo Park, and a roastery in Midtown Reno opening in 2018. Each location with it’s own character has been built with the same heart and principles of hospitality, excellence, and constant strive for improvement. “We are only as good as the day we are open,” says Buchheister. “But looking back on 20 years in hit record.”

In two decades, he had opened twenty coffee concepts in Colorado, California and Nevada.