Helen Kalevas, Founder

Helen Kalevas is an ornithologist with a Masters Degree in Biology whose real job is studying birds along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, Arizona. She’s known among her peers as an avid coffee drinker who takes along an espresso maker on field trips so that she can make "good" coffee first thing in the morning. She is particularly proud of the fact that Toucanet Coffee is now the exclusive coffee served by river rafting companies on the Colorado.

Why is a professional ornithologist selling coffee? Helen’s interest in selling shade grown, bird friendly coffee began during a research assignment with the Smithsonian Institute Migratory Bird Center. While assisting Dr. Russell Greenberg in studying birds and insects on a coffee plantation in Mexico, she was fascinated to learn the benefits of shade grown coffee. There she was particularly struck by the number and diversity of birds found in shade-coffee plantations compared to those found in full-sun plantations.

Helen was also excited to see that some of the same species of birds that she studied in the Grand Canyon used shaded-coffee habitats in Latin America during the winter months (Western Tanager, Yellow Warbler, Summer Tanager, Common Yellow-throat). This inspired her to tie her love of birds to her love of coffee by creating a company that would support these habitats… and so Toucanet Coffee was born!

Behind Our Name

Toucanet Coffee takes its name from the Emerald Toucanet - a striking bird that is a common inhabitant of shade-coffee farms. Other birds featured on Toucanet Coffee labels are the Red-legged Honeycreeper (one of the most common permanent resident birds in shade-grown coffee farms), the Western Tanager (a common winter resident that migrates to western North America in the spring and one of the most common breeding birds in Flagstaff, Arizona where founder Helen Yard currently resides).

Toucanet Coffee
PO Box 1214
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
ph# (928) 266-2650
fax (602) 595-4864

info@toucanetcoffee.com