Meet Alexandra Walsh | Co-Founder Canyon Coffee

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alexandra Walsh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alexandra, do you have any habits that you feel contribute to your effectiveness?
Believing in ourselves and making bold choices! To not over stress , be patient and to remember good things take time.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
when Casey and I started Canyon, we didn’t have specified titles; even our respective roles took some time to establish. Becoming the Creative Director really followed the work I was doing, and building our company from scratch really gave me a big opportunity as well as time to develop a vision and then build upon it. Casey started calling me “The Eye” of Canyon maybe a year in! Looking back, I feel proud of how I’ve grown more confident and sure of myself and my creative decisions. And I feel proud of what we’ve built in Canyon and my contributions to it. To this day, as when we started, we still carry the mission of adding warmth to people’s daily lives. That’s a lot of what informs all of our decisions around the brand, design, aesthetics, and storytelling.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
First I’d bring them to my coffee shop in Echo Park! I’d take them on a walk — either in Elysian right up the street from our shop, or in Altadena where I live. I’d bring them to Bub & Grandma’s for lunch, the Los Feliz theater for a matinee, Skylight Books afterward for a book or some magazines, Silver Lake meadow to lay out and read or have a picnic, Capri Club or Café Triste for a drink, and Dunsmoor or Quarter Sheets for dinner. If we had time, or on the weekend, I’d bring them to the beach early in the day, before the crowd — either around Ocean Park or Topanga, and then head up to the Getty to see their current shows and lay out on the grass for a picnic. On the way back East, we’d get dinner at Stir Crazy or head up to Pacé in Laurel Canyon. 

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Back when we started Canyon in 2016, we couldn’t have gotten the business off the ground without the support of friends and other small businesses around LA. Our friends who started Christy Dawn let us pop up at their first store in Venice for our launch; about a block away, the General Store became one of the very first stores to sell our coffee. The Echo Park Craft Fair gave us the opportunity to be the coffee vendor for the fair, and we couldn’t have pulled that off without June of Welcome Coffee Cart and her mobile espresso bar. Later, Honey Hi became the first restaurant to serve us. And to this day, we still work with friends who go above and beyond in supporting Canyon… people like Justin Chung and Fred L’Ami. When it came to creating, building and launching the business, we learned everything on our own as we went; but it was the encouragement of friends, and other businesses literally giving us a chance, that enabled us to get on our feet.

Website: https://canyoncoffee.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canyoncoffee/

Image Credits
Ally Walsh, Justin Chung, Lucia Bell-Epstein