Our Story
Meet Kristina
Cloudland Coffee Company was founded by Kristina Madh in 2015. After years of working in the corporate banking world, going through a lay off in the Great Recession and then a major move from Tampa to Atlanta, she decided to take some time off to be a stay at home mom to her two kids. During this time she cultivated her hobby of coffee. She learned how to roast coffee on her HotTop coffee roaster, mastered different brewing techniques and visited different coffee shops and roasters. Once her kids started school, instead of going back to the corporate world, she decided to start her own coffee roasting business and in 2015 Cloudland Coffee Company was formed. Named after her favorite state park in Georgia, she started the company as a cottage food business and operated out of her home. During that time she sold the coffee to local friends and neighbors. Eventually she formed this website and the coffee quickly gained popularity.
Life came to a sudden turn in October of 2016, when Kristina was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. The cancer had also spread to her lymph nodes and she had to undergo chemotherapy, radiation and ultimately a mastectomy. With the support of her family, neighbors and friends, Kristina beat cancer and has remained in remission as of today.
While recovering from treatment, in 2017, Kristina took Cloudland Coffee Company from a cottage food to a commercial business. Her first wholesale customer was 2B Whole Gluten Free Bakery in Alpharetta, Georgia. Today, you can find Cloudland Coffee in homes, stores, restaurants, bakeries and cafes all over Metro Atlanta and beyond. Visit our locations page for more details.
QUALITY - SUSTAINABILITY - PURPOSE
Kristina has grown Cloudland Coffee Company using three important values to help guide its growth: Quality, Sustainability and Purpose.
Quality: Cloudland Coffee is devoted to sourcing and roasting the best tasting coffees in the world. We work both directly with farms and importers to find the best quality coffees. Our coffees are meticulously roasted in small batches using a fluid bed roaster. We pay closely attention to detail, so we can best represent the beans that the farmers worked so hard to produce. We prefer using the electric fluid bed roaster because the results give a smoother tasting coffee, even in our dark roasts. This helps our coffee stand out from the more traditionally roasted gas drum roasters, which often produce a harsher tasting coffee, especially with their dark roasts.
Sustainability: We want to leave the world a better place for the next generations, which is why we are devoted to sustainability. Our decisions on where we purchase coffee and how we operate are driven by environmentally and socially responsible programs. We seek out coffees that are organically grown or Rainforest Alliance certified.
Purpose: Being a woman-owned small business, we can appreciate the challenges that other small businesses are going through, especially within our supply chain. At origin, it is particularly challenging for the women operated and owned farms, as they are located in areas where fewer financial and social resources are available. As such, we seek to procure from suppliers that support organizations such as Fair Trade as well as woman owned farms and cooperatives. No matter the size of our business, we know that we are making some sort of impact.
We also work hard to stay active and support our local community, schools and non-profits through fundraisers, community service and more.
By integrating these values into our company to help our community and the world be a better place for the farmers, our employees and our customers, we hope that we will put a smile on your face.
Certifications:
We are a certified woman-owned business through the Supplier Gateway, certification number SG09215341471893.
We are members of the Specialty Coffee Association.