Experienced Retail Executors
Meet our Execution Team
Alex Kent
Co-Founder & CEO
Alex is one of the founders of the Coffee Collective. His career started in Oil and Gas in commodity trading and risk strategy in the UK and US, before moving into CPG with food products in the UK, where he excelled in business strategy and operations. Leading the turnaround of the business through optimizing operations and costs, while positioning for growth, he came to the US to do the same for the Happy Egg business. Within 12 months, costs were reduced by over 50%. Since then revenue has multiplied over 4 times to over $100M. Alex’s passion is for helping brand owners over achieve their ambitions by accelerating their growth trajectories.
Kirk Robbins
Co-Founder & President
Kirk’s range across the retail landscape is what makes him valuable. Kirk began his career with Kraft foods 16 years ago in sales & finance, taking on additional leadership roles at Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Del Monte Foods, and Johnson & Johnson. Most recently, he left Walmart where he managed the hair care business. As a co-founder of the Coffee Collective, Kirk uses his skill set to work directly with roasters on program establishment, optimization, and downstream execution.
Laura Dubed
Co-Founder & Director of Sales
Laura has over 6 years of retail experience across Strategy Planning & Implementation, Finance, Merchandising and Account Management. She was most recently a buyer at Sam’s in the Seasonal division, and has since worked to advance supplier’s growth in the dry grocery department. As a co-founder of the Coffee Collective, Laura will work directly with roasters to enlist and onboard them into the program, and to ensure strong operational performance that maximizes roaster results.
Mark Bray
Co-Founder & Coffee Consultant
Mark is a coffee entrepreneur and independent consultant based in Northwest Arkansas. Working both locally and internationally, Mark provides farm-level and supply chain consulting services to industry professionals and non-profits as well as owns and operates several specialty coffee businesses. Mark's primary business, Airship Coffee, is a Bentonville, Arkansas based, family owned company focused on developing coffee quality at the farm level and cultivating meaningful experiences for our cafe patrons. Additionally, as a certified coffee Q-grader, Mark utilizes his sensory evaluation skills and supply chain expertise to serve as an advisor to multiple major food retailers.
Pat Bryant
Director of Operations
Pat’s 36 year career began with Procter & Gamble in sales and marketing roles that stretched across the Health & Beauty Care sectors, and additional leadership roles with Campbell’s Soup and Kodak. Pat’s role at the Coffee Collective is to oversee and execute on the operationalizing of the program with all retailers, including contract maintenance and program execution at retail.
Cayleigh Phillips
Director of Finance
Cayleigh is the Director of Finance for Coffee Collective. Cayleigh’s accounting and finance career started in animal agriculture, then into CPG industry for the past four years in NW Arkansas. She has a passion for problem solving and providing insight through deep knowledge of the numbers, leveraging her CPA background.
Jenna Moore
National Account Manager
Jenna started working in the retail industry 2 years ago after moving to Bentonville, AR. She is a National Account Manager for Coffee Collective Co. after several years working in ministry. She has a passion helping brands grow in natural retailers.
Juan Rodriguez
Content & Brand Marketing Manager
Juan joined Coffee Collective after completing his studies at the University of Arkansas. He began his career as a brand intern here and has lead numerous university program socials, websites and marketing campaigns. He has an exceptional eye on how to position the brand to the marketplace and drive reach and engagement.
