Photo courtesy of Shannon Bahrke

• The odds a person 18 or older will drink any type of coffee in a day are 1 in 1.75.
• The odds a woman will visit her physician for knee pain a year are 1 in 12.36.

When I was little I always wanted to own my own business. My fiancé, Matt, and I had always talked about starting up a company after I was done skiing. We didn’t quite know what it would be. We just knew we wanted to do it. Then one day, after an amazing day of skiing, we went to a local coffee shop, The Coffee Garden, and we were talking about how fun the day was and we were just having a great time. I sat back and wanted to bottle that feeling. So I asked Matt, what about opening up a coffee shop?

He had already started a retail bike shop and sold it, and he said there was no way he was going to do that again. So we looked into becoming a coffee roaster and wholesaler. Was it a viable business and could we do it? It turns out coffee is a great business and there is a lot of money to be made. So we wrote a rough business plan and kind of put it on the back burner for when I would retire.

In the first day of training at the first World Cup of the season in 2007 I landed a D-Spin (back flip with a full twist) and blew out my left knee. I was absolutely devastated because I had already blown out my right knee a few years previously, and I knew the long road to recovery that lay ahead of me. So right there in the snow I decided that we were going to start our business. I knew that I couldn’t do an entire year of rehab with nothing else to focus on. I would literally go crazy.

When I got back from France I had surgery, and then I dragged Matt kicking and screaming back into the business world again. My days were filled with rehab, refining our business plan, and making progress into developing our company.

It was the best move we ever made because we’ve been able to slowly build our business and learn a lot during the time we haven’t had to rely on it as our only source of income. We have an awesome warehouse in Salt Lake City where Matt does all of the roasting and we grind, pack, and ship out all of our freshly roasted coffee.

Quality, freshness, superb customer service, and sustainability are our priorities and the sole base of our company. Being an athlete I know how important it is to realize a dream, so I have worked with 27 athletes to develop their own personalized bags of coffee. For each bag sold we give a portion back to the athlete and also a charity they have chosen. I feel not only does it help an aspiring athlete, but it also gets them involved with giving back. I really hope this program can soon involve all Olympic athletes, not just winter ones. I want to bring the Olympic spirit, passion, and work ethic of these Olympic athletes to the coffee world!!!

We also do a lot of work with charities. A big charity that I support and is super close to my heart is Best Friends ( http://www.bestfriends.org/), a no kill animal sanctuary in Southern Utah. We have created seven blends with all different kinds of animals from the sanctuary featured on the packages, and a portion of the profits go back to Best Friends.

We sell to some local business in Salt Lake City and Park City. We do a ton of online orders and are hoping to expand to business all over the world! Our coffee is actually being served in the U.S. Ski and Snowboard houses at the Olympics. It is truly an honor to have Olympians start off their day with a little Silver Bean Coffee!!

It’s been tough trying to balance training and business but at the same time it is nice to have a distraction. Sometimes too much focus on one thing can let your brain run wild. Matt and I work as such a great team. When I am home I am actually doing the manual labor with him of grinding, packing, shipping, emailing, etc. But when I am on the road Matt takes care of all of that. We actually have a lot of up- and-coming athletes that come in and work for us when they have the time. I don’t know what I would do without everyone back at home making the business work!

On the road I do all of the books and make sure everything is right on the back end. I spend a lot of time sending invoices, writing emails and “thank yous,” and making sure our inventory is correct. I much prefer to be home actually packing the coffee, but if sitting at the computer for a few hours a day is what the business needs, than this is what I have to do.

I have really high hopes for our company and I know it can become global. I am one of the best mogul skiers in the world and there is no reason I can’t do it in business as well. I have A LOT to learn but it has been such a wonderful experience and I can’t wait to see where it goes after I retire!

So if you want a kick-ass cup of coffee in the morning or in the afternoon (that’s when I drink it) visit http://www.silverbeancoffee.com/ and we’ll ship you out fresh coffee Matt roasted that day!

P.S. We named our company Silver Bean Coffee Co. after my silver medal in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

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