Coffee Enterprises Founder Dan Cox Receives SCAA Lifetime Achievement Award

Dan with wife Casey and daughter Julia after receiving award

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) presented Coffee Enterprises founder Dan Cox with its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award during the annual SCAA conference in Portland Oregon.

Mr. Cox’s career in the coffee industry began in the early 1980s with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, where he started working as a retail clerk. Over the course of 11 years, Dan would rise through the ranks to the position of executive vice president and partner.

Cox delivering a touching acceptance speech

In 1993, Cox branched out and started his own business, Coffee Enterprises, in Burlington, Vermont. With the growth of specialty coffee’s popularity, Cox was able to capitalize on specific needs in the rapidly expanding industry by offering his expertise in the area of quality control protocols and programs for the major players. He continued to build on this success and in 1996, he created Coffee Analysts, a coffee testing laboratory, and Coffee Extracts & Ingredients, a supplier or specialty coffee flavorings.

Throughout his career, which included three terms as president of the SCAA, Cox worked behind the scenes to improve the plight of coffee farmers. He has been involved with the non-profit organization Coffee Kids, dedicated to helping children in coffee-farming communities, and was one of the first members of its advisory board in the late 1980s. In 1996, he co-founded another non-profit organization, Grounds for Health, an initiative focused on bringing free cervical cancer screening to women in coffee growing communities. So far, 30,000 women in 4 countries have been screened and treated, and Grounds for Health will be going to Peru this year for the first time.

Dan Cox lives in Shelburne with his wife, artist Casey Blanchard. Their daughter Julia is currently attending Skidmore where she will be graduating this spring.