Cordoba Coffee celebrates one year at Campbell’s Cross Farm

November 20, 2025 · 0 Comments

By Riley Murphy

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It’s been a little over a year since Cordoba Coffee moved into its new home of Campbell’s Cross Farm, and they can’t wait to celebrate for years to come.

Cordoba Coffee is a Canadian, family-owned coffee manufacturer that not only roasts, grinds, and packages a diverse range of premium coffees for retailers, specialty bakeries, restaurants, and home brewers, but also operates its own cafe to serve its customers better.

Walking into their facility on the farm, customers are greeted with the warm familiar smell of freshly roasted coffee, coming right from their store itself as employees roast, package, and prepare various roasts and beans just behind their cafe.

In the back resides a 1950s German coffee roaster where Cordoba Coffee roasts every type of their coffee.

Their cafe up front even features a roaster right there, making freshly roasted beans available to customers in six minutes.

Claudio Cordi, President of Cordoba Coffee Limited, shared that the idea to get into the coffee business first began with him and his father in 1987.

Cordi had been working as a plant manager for a coffee company for years, and he and his father decided they wanted to do something themselves. They later opened Cordoba Coffee in 1989 with his brothers later joining in.

For most of the 37 years in business, they ran out of Rexdale in Toronto in a more factory-type facility, not selling coffee directly to people, but to suppliers.

It wasn’t until the property’s owners changed that Cordoba Coffee was forced to find somewhere else to reside.

“We were looking at commercial spaces and they were all the same. It didn’t interest me at all,” says Cordi. “I was saying to the real estate agent, I’ve done this already. I’m looking for something different.”

His real estate agent then brought him to Campbell’s Cross Farm in Caledon to view an empty barn, with only the wooden beams and a concrete floor.

Cordi notes that he’s a Bolton Resident, and has lived in Caledon for his whole adult life. He remembers thinking the property was great, but there was no way he could put in a factory with gas, water, and power.

“You can’t put a facility that produces coffee without these three factors being addressed in the first place. As I was finding a way to say goodbye and extricate myself from the conversation, this peacock just waddles between us,” says Cordi.

Michael Gallo, one of the owners of Campbell’s Cross Farm, then told Cordi that the peacock was named Pablo, and had been there since Gallo first bought the farm.

“I was thinking to myself, I did say I wanted something different,” says Cordi.

He went home and told his wife, Sabrina Cordi, Controller for Cordoba Coffee Limited, that they were “going to put the coffee factory on a farm.”

He says her response was, “What?”

“The decision to come here is one that I look back on with fondness and say ‘I’m glad we did this’.”

He adds that if there’s going to be one main character in this story, it would be Pablo.

“He’s the reason that we’re here,” he says, adding that they most likely would have never considered the option.

He says every challenge that arose during the factory’s setup was nothing in the long run.

“I never felt an easier approach to solving problems,” he says, adding how easily he and Gallo were able to solve issues that arose.

One of the best parts, Cordi says, is the fact that he now gets to interact and get to know the people who are actually drinking the coffee.

He says he loves listening to how each person makes their coffee, and he even tries out a few of their recipes himself.

“Being able to talk to them just changed the whole game for us because now we’re dealing with people that love coffee, and not the people that are in the business of it,” says Cordi.

Cordi says it’s not just the cafe aspect that changed their business, but the overall atmosphere.

He says everyone enjoys their new location and is happy coming to work every day. He adds that their new location brings a new aspect of creativity.

“We were in a factory,” says Cordi. “Now, it’s completely opposite. I think that freedom is what gives you that creativity.”

Their business is also now 100% Canadian. Cordi notes that everything they buy is Canadian, and they try to support local lines as much as they can.

“We’re buying our supplies from as many local suppliers as we possibly can in Caledon,” he says, also noting that many of their employees are now local.

Looking back on just over a year of building, setting up, and running their business at Campbell’s Cross Farm, Cordi says he’s impressed that, after almost 40 years in business, it has been able to remake itself completely.

“This is not even close to what we were doing before,” says Cordi. “To come and switch that around and be focused on the customer, and the actual consumer’s experience, everybody rose to that challenge.”

“In the year that we’ve been here, we feel renewed.”

Cordi says that, even though he had once been considering retirement, he now thinks the best times are ahead.

“It was an invigorating little pulse that changed the direction of how we feel. I believe that the best is in front of us, not behind us. Even though we have a lot of industry firsts in our history, I think that the best is still sitting in front of us, and it all happens because of the people that we’re serving. That connection changed everything for us,” says Cordi. “And that bird.”

In the future, Cordi hopes to run coffee-tasting experiences and factory tours, and most importantly, fundraising and collaboration opportunities with the community.

He also shares that since opening, they have been able to run various collaborations with local groups, artists, and organizations who want to run workshops in their space alongside their coffee.

“We didn’t envision that, but I’m here for it. I think that’s kind of where it’s going, collaborations with this community.”

They have held coffee events with cigars, makeup, cars, and more.

“Those are the things that I think we love the most. Those opportunities to collaborate with these artists that are in our community.”

Cordi says he looks forward to using their coffee as a tool to fundraise for the community, “because there’s a need.”

They currently have donation bins for Caledon Community Service’s Exchange sitting at the front of their facility.

“I think that’s another reason why I’m so excited about this space, because it has potential to do things we weren’t able to do before,” he says. “This place could generate whatever it is that groups need in order to fundraise or raise awareness.”

“Since coming to this place, being on Campbell’s Cross Farms and putting our factory here. I feel like that’s the message,” says Cordi, referencing helping the community and those who need it. “We can take a lot of good from that, and we can learn a lot.”