I was scrolling through Spoke+Blossom’s followers on Instagram when FOCI Coffee stood out to me. A quick snoop of their page followed by a link to a YouTube video in their bio piqued my interest. The video was artfully ambiguous, highlighting a literal hole-in-the-wall café and plastic flamingos; little did I know what kind of story was going to unfold.

Colorado local Ben Haver, born and raised in Palisade, Colorado, is the founder and creative leader behind the FOCI movement. FOCI Coffee was an idea born from a project at university that quickly turned into a brand, a craft cold brew coffee and, now, multiple interactive experiences.

“Foci is plural for focus. I couldn’t decide on a name or really what I wanted to do, so FOCI is perfect for multiple focus points and everything that we want to do as a brand moving forward,” Haver says.

Haver is a freelance graphic designer, with FOCI being his true passion project. Though he works remotely, he stays close to his Western Colorado roots not only for the versatility of recreation but also for the community

“We are making it happen here. In a bigger city with more resources and people, we could be moving quicker, but I couldn’t ask for better feedback than what we received currently in Grand Junction. That shows me that we're doing something that people are enjoying, and it’s working here,” Haver explains. “It’s allowing us to build slowly and with intention.”

Haver, with support from other like-minded creatives like his friend Cole, collaborate on interactive experiences that they share with the community, based around the pillars of their brand. The main pillar is craft cold brew coffee — with vanilla extract personally made by Haver himself. “I was looking for coffee on the go in stores. The canned stuff wasn’t something that I really liked and was filled with a lot of ingredients I didn’t align with. I grew up in agriculture and pride myself on eating healthy and clean. Knowing the back end of how food is grown, I wanted to create a clean product,” Haver confidently states.

After the pillar of the craft cold brew coffee was created, they started on the Tiny Café, the literal hole-in-the-wall that caught my eye. Modeled after the tiny wine windows used in France during the time of the plague, Haver and his team would serve their delicious, caffeinated beverage out of a window, just small enough to fit your hand through, once a month for select hours — sometimes accompanied by other local creatives like crêpe girl, a Grand Junction resident with strong ties to her French background who can be found slinging delicious crepes and also performing musically.

Haver and his team simply like building cool, unique and memorable experiences for people to immerse themselves in, but at the base of FOCI is a way for creatives to build each other up and support one another in their growth. FOCI is an umbrella that welcomes like-minded individuals to bring attention to the artistic community that resides and is developing in Grand Junction.

“How can we prop you up with either materials, funding, brand reach, design and marketing knowledge or outreach as your own entity, while also providing us with more leverage moving forward with your ideas or skillset?,” asks Haver when explaining the questions and thought processes he moves through when working on the development of what FOCI is and can be.

FOCI has few parameters, and that's the way they want it to be, an open door for creative opportunities to help nourish the community of unique thought processes and one-off experiences or goods. Winter is a time for development and brainstorming for those that align with the FOCI crew, but big plans are ahead. Keep an eye out for what's to come in the Grand Junction art scene and how FOCI is going to be a part of it.

Originally published in the Winter 2022 -23 issue of Spoke+Blossom.

The FOCI Experience