Great Coffee, Greater Good: What fuels Top of the Lake Coffee

How many of us stumble around every morning until that first cup of coffee hits? I know in our household it is the first thing that gets started every day, and it is the first thing we taught our sons to make. Both boys loved to “help make Dad’s coffee” before their first birthday. Coffee is such an ingrained part of our society. We meet up with our friends to catch up over coffee; it helps fuel our mornings or late nights when we are working. Coffee is connected to ourselves and connected to our community. However, for a large part of the community, we also do not have a true understanding of what goes into making our morning cup of coffee. For Top of the Lake Coffee, it is equally as important to pour a delicious cup of coffee every day as it is to bring an ethically sourced organic coffee with an understanding of what—and more importantly, who—is behind the coffee that fuels us.

A Trip That Changed Everything: From Lake Atitlán to NOCO. 

Twelve years ago, on a trip to Guatemala, the original owner of Top of the Lake Coffee experienced and met the communities that grow, cultivate, and produce the coffee that makes its way to the United States. On that trip, it was clear that there were, and continue to be, injustices and inequities within the coffee production industry. That was all it took. After that trip, Brent Bromstrup returned to Colorado and founded Top of the Lake Coffee, named after the village of San Juan Laguna at the top of Lake Atitlan in Solola, Guatemala (surprise: Top of the Lake is not named after Lake Loveland). He founded Top of the Lake intending to bring delicious coffee to the people of Northern Colorado (and beyond) while providing fair wages and resources to the communities that grow and produce the coffee.

In 2023, Gus Aguirre was offered the opportunity to purchase Top of the Lake Coffee from Brent. The Aguirres knew the heart behind the brand and jumped at this opportunity and have continued to expand and cultivate Top of the Lake.

Ethically Sourced, Personally Connected 

The mission continues to be the same: to bring ethically sourced coffee to NOCO while uplifting the communities within the coffee industry. Top of the Lake sources the majority of its coffee from Guatemala, where they have built personal relationships with the local people and organizations through in-person trips and communication. Through these relationships, they can ensure the organizations they partner with are paying a fair wage to their workers, guaranteeing ethically sourced coffee.

We hear the term “ethically sourced” thrown around often, a buzzword within the coffee community,  but what does that mean specifically to Top of the Lake Coffee? Ethically sourcing coffee means ensuring the workers are paid a fair wage for their work. To give context to this: when you buy a latte in the United States for around $5.00, the farm workers on average will see 5 cents of that—but not when they are paid a living wage. Gus states that while this is truly the “why” behind Top of the Lake Coffee, caring for the well-being of these communities can also lead to other challenges as a small business.

Paying a fair wage for your coffee beans ultimately does eat into your profit, and when you are a very small team, this often means raising coffee prices to consumers to be able to maintain a profitable business. While this is a challenge for Top of the Lake, I also believe when people see and understand the impact, buying ethically will greatly outweigh the slight cost increase.

Great Coffee, Greater Good

From the start, the motto that fueled Top of the Lake is Great Coffee, Greater Good. This means bringing the best quality coffee to the people while offering so much more to the people who put in the hard work to make that coffee possible. When you connect the stories of the people who create your coffee to your own story, it takes on a new meaning beyond just your morning cup of joe, it allows you to see the humanity across countries that connects us and fuels us.

These connections go beyond working with an organization. For Gus and Top of the Lake, it means working with specific individuals people he easily names when speaking of the success stories they have seen through these partnerships. A restaurant that hires individuals with disabilities that struggled to continue to support their workers during COVID closures. A man who needed support purchasing a pizza oven to sell individual pizzas to support his family, and more. Because of the true relationships Gus has built, he can connect communities across the world, bringing the community from Guatemala to the people of Northern Colorado.

While working to accomplish large-scale goals, in the day-to-day he is still a small business owner in Northern Colorado. That means on any given day you may find Gus delivering coffee to local businesses, working at the roastery in Berthoud, serving up your latte at the coffee shop, or having business meetings with other local small businesses.

Gus says that one of the best parts of having a small business in NOCO is that it still feels like a small community. As NOCO continues to grow, he says instead of feeling competition between other small businesses, he only feels camaraderie. They all want to work together to see each other succeed. This is demonstrated in how the first brick-and-mortar location of Top of the Lake came to be.

A little over a year ago, the owners of Grimm Brothers Brewhouse approached Gus to see if he would be interested in using the coffee shop space inside their brewhouse to open a coffee shop an opportunity to utilize the space they did not want to expand into and an opportunity for Top of the Lake to expand from the roastery into a brick-and-mortar coffee shop. This has continued to be a wonderful partnership for both businesses, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for both of them.

Looking Ahead: Bigger Vision, Broader Impact

Top of the Lake believes once you know about the impact this can have on coffee producers, you have to continue to tell people about it, and he is doing just that. 

Top of the Lake is now working to launch a nonprofit arm, expanding their reach and impact beyond coffee sales. This new structure will allow them to fund sustainable, long-term solutions and open the door for supporters, even non-coffee drinkers, (shout out tea drinkers) to contribute to their mission.

Whether it's a morning ritual or a global movement, coffee connects us.

Now you know as well. And you know how you can continue to expand that greater good to the people who make our morning, afternoon, and evening coffee, our iced lattes and our cold brews possible. 

Where to Find Top of the Lake Coffee

Visit Top of the Lake Coffee, in person at the coffee shop at the Forge Center inside Grimm Brothers Brewhouse. Open Monday–Saturday till 12:30 p.m. I personally think this is the perfect location to work from it has plenty of seating and a quiet outdoor area for the nice weather. You can also grab a bag of coffee there to bring home and bring the great coffee home with you. Don’t live close enough to Loveland to make it in person? Don’t worry you can buy online at Topofthelakecoffee.com. You can try all the varieties and even sign up for an ongoing subscription so you don’t have to worry about running out of coffee at home.

Because once you’ve tasted great coffee and the greater good behind it, you’ll never want to go back.