COLUMBUS, Ohio — Greg Ubert, founder and president of Columbus coffee roaster Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea, has been named a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2018 Award in the East Central region.
The awards program, which is celebrating its 32nd year, recognizes entrepreneurs who excel in areas such as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities.
A panel of independent judges selected Ubert and other finalists. Award winners will be announced at a special gala event on June 28 at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel.
“As an entrepreneur and supporter of entrepreneurship, I am thrilled to receive this recognition,” Ubert said. “I am honored that the judges recognized the vision, strength and innovation that has kept our company growing for the past 27 years.”
In 1991, Ubert founded Crimson Cup Coffee & Tea with little more than enthusiasm and a determination to succeed. After the recent Harvard graduate discovered he could not fall in love with computer software, he left a promising career in Chicago to pursue twin passions for coffee and entrepreneurship.
Ubert moved back to Columbus and started a coffee roasting business with a tiny coffee roaster in a one-room office. With little business experience – and none in the coffee industry – he learned coffee roasting from the grounds up, without any formal training.
From the start, his vision focused on providing the best-tasting coffee and coffeehouse products to customers while creating a supply chain of mutual benefit with growers and suppliers.
After he saw that some coffee house customers were struggling, he studied their operations and developed a service platform called “Seven Steps to Success.” The program offered a unique proposition: Crimson Cup would teach entrepreneurs how to open coffee houses and help them stay in business. In 2003, he published Seven Steps for Success: A Common-Sense Guide to Succeed in Specialty Coffee. This book and Crimson Cup’s program have put more than 350 independent coffee businesses in 36 states, Guam and Bangladesh on the road to success.
Today, Crimson Cup is a leading coffee roaster, recognized by specialty coffee’s flagship publication Roast magazine as the 2016 Macro Roaster of the Year. Its coffees regularly win taste tests, high rankings from independent coffee reviewers, and trophies in competitions including the Good Food Awards, the Compak Golden Bean Awards, and America’s Best Espresso.
Now in its 32nd year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year® program has expanded to recognize business leaders in over 145 cities and more than 60 countries throughout the world.
Regional award winners are eligible for consideration for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National competition. Award winners in several national categories, as well as the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Overall Award winner, will be announced at the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards gala in Palm Springs, California, on November 17, 2018. The awards are the culminating event of the Strategic Growth Forum®, the nation’s most prestigious gathering of high-growth, market-leading companies.
