Boyer’s Coffee goes national with Walmart “Mash-Up”
B oyer’s Coffee has been a name brand in the Denver area for decades, but its exposure to customers outside of Colorado reached a new level this summer thanks to a partnership with the world’s largest retailer.
Last month, Adams County-based Boyer’s began supplying three exclusive blends of coffee to 1,400 Walmart stores across the country, company officials say.
The certified USDA organic “Mash-Up” varieties mix beans from different parts of the world — Costa Rica and Honduras, Colombia and Sumatra, Peru and Sumatra — and represent a push by Walmart to compete with Whole Foods and other grocers when it comes to selling high-end java.
For Boyer’s owners Jason and Douglass Barrow, the most flattering part is Walmart came to them.
“It’s very rare that you get invited in from a retailer to help create something that would really be on-point, on-trend at the right place on the shelf, at the right price point, with the right packaging styles,” Jason Barrow said. “We worked on all that together and what we came up with was this Mash-Up line of coffees.”
Boyer’s has been on sale in Colorado-area Walmart stores for years, part of a sales network that also includes King Soopers, Safeway and other retailers mostly in the mountain West. But after the Barrow brothers bought the company from the Boyer family in 2015, the relationship with the Bentonville, Ark., behemoth grew. In-store sales rose 50 percent.
Last year, the Barrows received a call from Walmart officials asking to visit the Boyer’s roastery, in a 1927 schoolhouse building at 7295 Washington St., the brothers said. A few months after taking company representatives around Boyer’s 2.5-acre campus and to local coffee shops, the Barrows said they got another call and the national partnership was born.
Walmart officials did not return a request for comment Wednesday. Boyer’s is the second Denver-area business the company has partnered with this year. In May, it an-
nounced it was working with tech-education startup Guild Education on a college education benefit program for its employees.
Mash-Up coffees can be purchased in stores, online through Walmart.com or at Boyerscoffee.com. The bags of whole-bean coffee are selling online for $6.98, the same price as a 12ounce bag of Starbucks coffee through Walmart. Each package offers a rundown of each blend’s flavor profile and an explanation of why the beans were paired together.
Each is stamped with a QR code that takes consumers to a Mash-Up-specific website with recommended food pairing and preparation methods.
For Douglass Barrow, the company’s roastmaster, the partnership means Walmart “sees Colorado as a hotbed for natural and organic products like coffee.”
“I think its a compliment for all of us,” he said.
Steven Hoffman, director of Boulder-based natural products PR and marketing firm Compass Natural, said Walmart, now in direct competition with Amazonowned Whole Foods, carries a good number of organic products these days, a product of shifting consumer demands. He’s not surprised Walmart came to Colorado to grow an artisan coffee program.
“There is a luster to Colorado and Boulder brands and that reflects again that a lot of consumers are conscious of healthy living,” he said.
Boyer’s is part of a family of companies owned by the Barrows that includes Luna Gourmet Coffee and Tea Co., Boulder Organic Coffee and online seller Boca Java. The company is committed to ethical and direct trade, environmental responsibility and philanthropy. It is funding construction of a school in the Peruvian village that is home to a farming co-op that is one of its suppliers, the Barrows said.