THE MISSION: 
DO WHAT YOU LOVE.

We love the outdoors. We love the adventure, the dawn patrol, and the adrenaline of the drop-in. But we also respect the hustle. We are business owners, marketers, product developers, and salesmen. We play hard, we work hard, and we are unapologetic about it.

Vertical Grind wasn’t started by cafe critics; it was built by a crew of high-velocity operators who left corporate gridlock to build something real.

Mitch is a serial entrepreneur (read: glutton for punishment), Mitch is always looking for big, high-torque ways to help small businesses win. After building a rocketship at Amazon, he jumped ship to help other brands successfully compete in retail. A former ski coach, Mitch loves nearly everything outdoors. Sure, he might not risk the absolute steepest lines like he used to, but he still loves hitting the slopes and reveling in the wild—especially when he's carving the mountain with his kids.

A veteran marketer, product developer, and master roaster, Andy has been roasting coffee over 20 years and loving the craft for even longer. Coming from a Swedish family where afternoon Fika was mandatory, coffee was never just a drink—it is a daily ritual. A true coffee purist, Andy drinks it black and velvet-dark. He ignores whatever the local hipsters claim is "trendy". His ideal fuel? A high-altitude Sulawesi or a sun-baked Guatemalan Huehuetenango, pushed right past the edge to a Full City+ roast where that heavy-bodied sweetness and dark chocolate notes come out.

Our all-terrain digital operator, Shawn built high-velocity marketplaces at Amazon before breaking away to form a full-throttle retail and digital marketing agency. Today, he helps brands launch and scale their presence both online and off. A staunch advocate for clean living and the outdoors, Shawn knows that high-performance output requires clean-burning fuel. Whether he is running up the soccer pitch or dropping into a fresh line of powder, he approaches every mission with unrestricted velocity and zero hesitation.

Chad is a driven operator and an architect of high-growth brands. Chad has a successful history of engineering go-to-market strategies that scale companies with unrestricted velocity. But he doesn't just leave that high-torque energy in the boardroom, he applies those same scaling and strategic skills to his outdoor pursuits. Whether he is mapping out a massive brand expansion or charting a new route in the wild, Chad treats every mission like a summit and is always ready to charge.

The difference between a critic and an artisan is simple: a critic sits on the sidelines. An artisan engages in the process and earns the right to judge because they get their hands dirty. We are artisans. Maybe saying we're artisans is just an excuse for being critical, but hey... We all need to justify, right?

We love the craft of coffee. Are we methodical? Absolutely. We say: "We are sticklers. Sometimes." We know the craft. The rules. The processes. And then we break them. It's all fine and good to strive for an ideal but at the end of the day, we want to free you from the pretentious "rules" of coffee culture. You don't have to do things the "correct way" if you prefer to go off-trail.

Above all, we want people to DO what they LOVE to DO. And if that means drinking a heavy-bodied dark coffee when the rest of the world says light roasts are "better", send it.

We are connoisseurs without the pretense. We love our heritage-grade, artisan coffee. But let's be real: if we are stuck in a hotel lobby at 5 AM before a flight, we’ll absolutely drink that generic rainforest blend if there is nothing else to fuel the start.

But we draw the line at hazelnut-flavored coffee. (Well, except for Mitch. Mitch loves it).