Chris joined the Customer Service team at Cafe Imports a few years after moving to Minnesota from sunny Phoenix, Arizona. He moved around a lot growing up, so although Phoenix feels most like "home", Colorado is where the coffee love affair began.
The specialty coffee scene in Colorado Springs quickly became his main haunt in high school. After moving to Phoenix for college, he got his first barista job at a drive-through cafe, and the rest was history! Followed by his only stint away from coffee to sell guitars and valet around the valley, he landed a barista position where he wanted to be all along - at a local specialty cafe. Years as a barista trainer and cafe manager followed, as well as deciding that not much could be better than doing great coffee stuff with great coffee people for a great long time.
After meeting his wife, who grew up in MN/WI, and taking a few more years to savor that dusty desert air, they moved to the Twin Cities, and Chris continued in cafe management. Today, he feels incredibly lucky to be working in green and more connected to the coffee world than his younger self could have imagined, sipping on a pour-over in Colorado all those years ago.
Once the coffee's brewed, Chris spends tons of time reading, playing video games, and building up his vinyl & MP3 libraries. Legend says, he can be found talking someone's ear off about Sonic the Hedgehog, Dune, or Lord of the Rings, at a cafe near you.