ON THE AUDACITY OF DENVER

January 27, 2020

Tuesday morning, six of us will pack our bags and make our coffee long before the sun rises, and head to the airport to start our journey to Denver, Colorado, for the Outdoor Retailer + Snow Show. We’ll do all those normal airport things, settle into our window seats, and head two timezones to the West.

One of the best things that window seats on an airplane offer, aside from leaning your head against it if you’re the sleeping type, is the opportunity to watch this remarkable thing transpire in real time. You fasten a seatbelt and then ascend into the air. At first, you can identify which houses have pools, and then it’s mostly just seeing where Charlotte is, and then it’s through the clouds and into a different place. In this different place, for me at least, is a different perspective.

I’ve done some of my best writing on airplanes, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The ascension above the clouds has almost a mythical feel to it — when you start grounded in one place, and in a matter of hours, find yourself grounded somewhere very different. Which is what I imagine tomorrow may feel like, as the six of us leave behind the cafés and roastery, daily Slack messages and cuppings. We’ll land in Denver as the same company, same values, same objective, but with a new project in our sights.

As I’ve written about extensively, Summit is the coffee sponsor of the 2020 Outdoor Retailer + Snow Show, the largest worldwide gathering of anyone and everyone affiliated with the outdoors industry. For four days, we’ll be slinging lattés to 27,000 people (well, hopefully not ALL of them), introducing our Instant Coffee to the perfect market, and introducing our brand on a global stage.

Traveling provides me a rare moment or two to reflect — something admittedly I am not very good at. It allows me to look back on where we’ve come from, the progress and victories since the last flight across the country. So as I sit in my window seat in row 26 on Tuesday, I anticipate the mental transformation from the laundry list of projects I’ve been working on to this one, uber important opportunity on the other side of a plane trip.

For starters, the audacity to show up at this conference says a lot about how Summit sees itself. Sometimes, raising your hand is the biggest step to new adventures. It was August when I first sent an email, and then another, about why Summit, above all coffee companies in the U.S., is the right fit for the vaunted OR show. It was the audacity of that ask, and then all of the resources that went into preparations once we were met with a yes — time (months), money (thousands), people (handfuls).

When we land on the ground in Denver, we will belong there. Gone are the days when we ponder how, and why, did we get here and oh-my-gosh what do we do now. We will always have an element of wonder about it all. But now, we belong in Denver. We belong in lots of rooms, and places, and cities — because we have the audacity to ask, “Why not?”

We might not be the biggest or best coffee company, and we certainly don’t have the deepest pockets. But we might be the most curious, the most enthused, the one that finds opportunities where others haven’t thought to see them yet. It’s in those windows where Summit thrives, knowing where and when and how to stand out. When we take off from Charlotte, we’re anchored by our core businesses that drive and thrive each day to bring great coffee to people. And when we land in Denver, we’re showing up as the coffee company best suited to serve the outdoors community.

Children are always implored to “reach for the stars,” and told that “the sky’s the limit.” But why does that end at middle school, or high school, or certainly before you take your first job? At Summit, we’re built on reaching for the stars, on rejecting the very notion of limits to our potential. So on Tuesday, Summit will be on the ground in North Carolina, and on the ground in Denver, and above the clouds in between. It’s a beautiful metaphor for our way of thinking, about how we can not only be all these places in the span of a few hours, but thrive in these places.

We belong in Denver because our dreams know no limits. Our people know no limits, our brand knows no limits. It’s that belief (and some well-trained pilots) that will land us in Denver tomorrow, and who knows where we’ll go from there? I can’t wait to find out. Find Your Summit.