Page 16 - Chester County Chamber - 2024 Guide & Membership Directory

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
TWIN VALLEY COFFEE:
Community Beyond the Cup
The origin of Twin Valley Coffee is a tale of
two Lynn(e)s. It all started when husband
and wife Lynn and Lynne Burkholder
hosted some friends who brought them
freshly roasted coffee. Blown away by the
taste, Lynn Burkholder started making his
own coffee, using a popcorn popper for
roasting and a Sunbeam blender to grind
the beans. “That’s how we started, and
pretty soon he was making enough that he
was giving it out to friends. Some people
were actually buying it from him,” Lynne
Burkholder said. Slowly, the operation
became more professional, acquiring a
roaster and selling its coffee through a
nearby orchard and at the Elverson Farmers’
Market.
Elverson is also where the Burkholders set
up their first permanent retail location: a
gazebo along Route 23. The gazebo sat on
the Burkholders’ own property, which was
zoned for commercial and industrial use.
“By this time, we had other coffee shops
buy our coffee and we’d gotten into Whole
Foods,” Burkholder said.
Around the same time, the Burkholders’
oldest daughter, Robyn Saunders, joined
the company as well. In fact, family
involvement has been instrumental
to Twin Valley Coffee’s growth. “The
structure provided by our family has been
extraordinary,” Burkholder said. “It’s been
a true family effort from the beginning." In
the last year, Twin Valley Coffee has opened
two new stores. “That was a really big push
for the company as a whole and it was
really exciting to be able to accomplish
that,” Saunders said.
The new locations brought the company up
to 130 employees and four retail spots: in
Downingtown, West Chester, Exton and at
the Shady Maple Farm Market. The original
location in Elverson was demolished last
year, and something new is going to rise
in its place. While there is no definite
timeframe for the reopening of that
location, “we are getting close,” Burkholder
said. “It’ll be really exciting to have that
completed.”
As for what keeps the Burkholders going,
it’s right there in the company motto:
“Community Beyond the Cup.”
“It’s been incredible to be a part of the
communities we’re in,” Burkholder said.
She mentioned a connection made via the
Chester County Chamber that resulted in
Twin Valley Coffee being a coffee vendor for
the 5k for Aiden J. Marriage proposals and
spontaneous pregnancy announcements
also have taken place at Twin Valley Coffee.
As Burkholder put it, “We love seeing all
the things people do for one another and
being a small part of that.”
Learn more at twinvalleycoffee.com.
WEST CHESTER PRINTWORKS:
A New Name for a Community Staple
In 1998, Michael Guerriero and a college
friend co-founded a company called Disc
Hounds, whose purpose was to produce
CDs for the music industry.
“I was in a band at the time and we needed
to get CDs made. I did some research
to figure out how to do it and decided I
could do the same thing for other bands,”
Guerriero said.
The business soon branched out into
manufacturing not only CDs but also DVDs
and USBs. In the early 2000s, Guerriero’s
co-founder moved on, but the business
continued to grow, taking on corporate
clients who needed audio or video files
put onto discs. Disc Hounds also started
offering multimedia conversion services,
converting videotapes, films, slides, etc.
from older analog formats to digital.
“We also printed the materials to go into
the CD and DVD cases,” Guerriero said. “In
addition, we were doing some extra things
like band posters, and we started getting
into apparel printing and postcards. In
the mid-2000s, we began just printing for
customers we hadn’t done any multimedia
work for.”
In 2013, Disc Hounds established a small
retail shop to accommodate the growing
number of in-person print and media
conversion orders. “Eventually, we started
doing more printing than CD and DVD
work,” Guerriero said.
14 Chester County Chamber of Business & Industry