We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christy Clement. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christy below.

Alright, Christy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

The coffee flavoring industry has a dirty secret that most consumers don’t realize – I call it ‘ingredient junk.’ This is pervasive across the market:

– Major brands like CoffeeMate list ingredients most people can’t pronounce or recognize – they’re essentially chemical cocktails masquerading as coffee enhancers.
– Those flavored coffee beans that smell amazing? They’re typically coated with propylene glycol to make the flavoring stick. While the FDA considers this ‘generally recognized as safe,’ it’s concerning enough that European regulators have placed restrictions on its use.
– Pump syrups force a false choice between heavily processed sugar or artificial sweeteners – both of which research increasingly links to various health concerns.

What’s perhaps most disappointing is that even ‘healthier’ brands often hide behind the FDA loophole of ‘natural flavors’ – a catch-all term that can mask dozens of undisclosed ingredients.

We’ve built our business on recognizing a fundamental shift in consumer awareness. Today’s coffee drinkers aren’t just concerned with taste – they’re increasingly educated about nutrition and demand ingredient transparency. They’re reading labels, researching ingredients, and seeking minimally processed, whole-food alternatives without mystery additives.

This isn’t just a niche trend – it represents a significant evolution in consumer consciousness that many established companies are failing to address. People want to know exactly what they’re putting into their bodies, and they’re willing to pay for products that deliver both quality and transparency.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Christy Clement, founder of Vashon Island Coffee Dust. We make spice blends that enhance your coffee without sweeteners, additives, or preservatives – just pure flavor.

Why do we exist? Only 20% of people drink their coffee black. The other 80% add cream, sugar, or various flavorings. Starting your day with empty calories or questionable sweeteners isn’t ideal. Coffee Dust gives you amazing flavor AND every spice we use has scientifically-backed health benefits. Ginger supports digestive health, turmeric and black pepper fight inflammation, and cayenne helps with circulation.

My journey began during Covid when I was a new coffee drinker and, like most novices, masking the taste with cream and sugar (in essence I was having a hot coffee milkshake each morning). A friend introduced me to spicing up coffee, and my kitchen quickly became an experimental lab. There were definite misses (sage makes your coffee taste like steak – not recommended!) and surprising wins (cayenne is genuinely delicious in coffee). As my corporate job ramped back up, I looked to buy coffee spices elsewhere but found a gap in the market. I knew I had to share this with the world, so Coffee Dust was born, starting at our local Vashon Island farmers market. Nearly four years later, I’m still passionate about product development and challenging myself and my team to grow this business in a fun way.

What makes me proud? Helping people start their day healthier. The customer emails we receive are genuinely the highlight of many days. We also donate 10% of profits to charities our team selects, we’re committed to sustainable packaging, and we have a fantastic team of “Dusters” who blend, pack, ship, market, and design all six flavors with care right here on Vashon Island.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When it comes to pivots, mine involved a showdown between my environmental values and the laws of physics.
I was deeply committed to non-plastic packaging. Like, “tell-everyone-at-parties-about-my-sustainable-packaging” committed. Then the universe decided to test me. Twice.

First, I miraculously landed a pitch with a Walmart buyer our first year in business. The meeting went great—she loved the idea of Coffee Dust and requested samples. I carefully packed every flavor and size we made and sent it off with dreams of national distribution. Then… silence. When I followed up, she informed me that a or two tin had popped open in transit, creating what I imagine was a very aromatic package of completely unusable spice-covered Coffee Dust samples. Walmart dreams: crushed.

Not learning my lesson the first time, we shipped a huge inventory to the Chocolate and Coffee Festival in Albuquerque. My sister flew in to help, and instead of enjoying New Mexico cuisine the night before the show, we spent hours in our hotel room wiping down surviving products while being engulfed in a cinnamon cloud so potent we could have been mistaken for human snickerdoodles.

Reality check received. We now secure our tins with a small plastic ring—my sustainability ego took a hit, but our customers actually receive intact products. I’m still on the hunt for plastic alternatives though. The search continues!

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Yes – we’ve always been hands-on with our production; mixing, packaging, and shipping everything right here on Vashon Island. Food safety regulations meant we needed a commercial kitchen from day one, and our local senior center became our unlikely first headquarters, renting us their kitchen after hours.

That senior center kitchen was such a blessing! I always recommend food entrepreneurs to look at churches and senior centers for affordable commercial kitchen space. These places are usually permitted as commercial and happy to make extra money for their community missions.

The catch? Zero storage. Production days meant loading all our spices and packaging from my basement into my car, driving to the senior center, doing our production run, and then hauling everything back home again. Not exactly efficient, but it got us started.

We also had an ongoing cold war with the Tuesday night bridge club. They preferred quiet concentration while we preferred danceable music and camaraderie during our production runs. Somehow we managed a tense peace treaty for 3.5 years.

We recently moved to our own production facility, which feels like going from a studio apartment to a mansion. Now when I drive past the senior center at night, I silently wave to the bridge club and feel so proud of how far we’ve come.

We do have a co-packer lined up for when we outgrow our current capacity, but I love the flexibility of making everything ourselves. My forecasting doesn’t need to be perfect, we can change labels or packaging on a whim, and my team constantly brings amazing ideas to improve efficiency.

Early on, someone asked if I wanted to build a manufacturing company or a sales and marketing company. Turns out, I love both. I started my career in manufacturing right out of school, and there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing tangible products rolling off the line, knowing I played a part in creating them, and wondering where they’ll end up next.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vashoncoffeedust.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vashoncoffeedust/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vashoncoffeedust/

Image Credits

Christy Clement
Mel Caitlin