Jenny Verrochi’s primary goal when she created Wild Barn Coffee was “a healthy, clean and better-for-you energy drink that I call ‘coffee with benefits.’”
Wild Barn Coffee is a canned, organic nitro cold brew black coffee derived from an old family recipe from her parents’ coffee roasting business, which started in the early 1990s in their backyard barn in Massachusetts.
Verrochi would experiment with that family recipe by infusing it with health-beneficial ingredients, like organic goji berries and cacao nibs.
Six years ago, after creating the new recipe, she moved to Boulder “specifically to start this company,” citing its reputation as a launchpad for consumer-packaged goods from health-conscious companies. Verrochi said, with a laugh, “If you throw a rock [in Boulder], it’s going to hit the founder of some natural food company.”
An outdoor enthusiast who enjoys skiing, snowboarding and mountain biking, she wanted a drink that could help you “get up the mountain without getting bogged down with dairy and sugar” found in many of today’s energy drinks. Verrochi’s solution was her superfood-infused, nitrogenated coffee in a can that you can slip into your pocket for a mountain hike or a trip to the backcountry.
The organic, fairtrade coffee is grown on female-owned and operated farms in Colombia and Guatemala, which use sustainable growing methods including canopy foresting. Verrochi is also part of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance, whose mission, their website states, “is to empower women in the international coffee community.”
About four years ago, she found a commercial kitchen in Boulder for canning, and in February, as soon as she got distribution, she moved to Carbondale.
After Verrochi delivers orders to local vendors, she heads to the 53-acre Hite Ranch, just east of Carbondale, where she trains horses. Appreciative of the opportunity to work with horses again, she said, “it is almost spiritual; it’s amazing.” She added, “It’s so funny, when I was growing up in New England, being a cowgirl — a horse girl — was kind of weird. And then I moved here, and it’s cool.”
Her boyfriend, Stephan Davoust, originally from Durango, is a professional mountain biker and member of the Giant Factory Off-Road Team and was the 2021 USA Cycling Marathon Mountain Bike National Champion. Davoust is learning the Valley’s bike world and will coach middle and high school mountain biking this fall. They share a home in Carbondale with Oakley, a Great Dane and Labrador mix.
In March, Verrochi organized and hosted the Boot Tan Fest at the Bluebird Backcountry ski area in Kremmling. The main event had 250 women “skin up, strip down and ski down naked.” She added, “It’s a safe space with a chance for women to be themselves completely — without any judgment.” The festival also featured music and vendor booths from female-founded brands.
Is she wearing a ski unitard, or is she skiing in the buff? The woman, known as the Nudy Judy, graces Wild Barn’s cans of nitro cold brew. Courtesy graphic
In September, Verrochi will debut a film about this year’s Boot Tan Fest titled “Full Frontal Freedom.” She hopes to screen it at Carbondale’s 5Point Film Festival and Denver’s No Man’s Land Film Festival.
The Wild Barn brand is in 200 locations across Colorado — on the Front Range and Durango — and locally, it’s available in Aspen at The Butcher’s Block, Meat & Cheese Restaurant and Farm Shop and Roxy’s Market & Cafe. In Carbondale, it’s at Mana Foods, Sopris Liquor and Wine, Downtown Liquors on Main and Plosky’s Deli.
Verrochi is currently undertaking “the most difficult journey of starting a company:” seeking capital to move the business forward. She is ready to launch a plant-based latte that uses MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil as a dairy alternative, with two flavors — lavender-vanilla and dirty chai. For these two products to get on the market, she said, “I just need the funding to press the green button, I’m so close.”
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