Brothers' Russian heritage percolates through Dazbog brand.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: BUSINESS as usual

IN EVERY DAZBOG COFFEE SHOP YOU'LL sec a framed photo of two young boys bundled up and standing on a cobblestone street in Leningrad. The image and the names printed on it Leonid and Anatoly - are so stereotypically Russian that you think it must be the creation of some marketing agency.

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But it's not. It's 4-year-old Leonid Yuffa and his 10-year-old brother Anatoly - five years before their family left the former Soviet. Union and landed in Denver.

Leonid and Anatoly are the founders of Dazbog Coffee Co., a Denver-based coffee roaster, wholesaler and store franchiser. Their coffees celebrate their Russian heritage with names like Siberian Blend, KG-Blend, Russian Roulette, Organic Tchiakovsky Blend and Caspian Espresso.

And then there's the name of the company itself Dazbog - which Leonid, 42, describes as an expression of well-wishing. "Like if you move somewhere to start a career, everyone will tell you, Dazbog!'" Leonid says. "We thought it was appropriate for our business because we're Russian and we really speak about our heritage through our brand."

Since its founding in 1996, Dazbog has grown to 32 stores, all but six of them in Colorado. That pales next to Starbucks' 322 Colorado locations (and 8,230 nationwide.), but Leonid says Dazbog's gross sales have increased every year except one, 2010, and the company rebounded from that dip with a record year of sales in 2011.

"It's extremely competitive," Leonid says. "There clearly is one number one, and there's no number two that's even close. And real estate is harder to find because Starbucks is everywhere. But we've really carved out a niche. For one, people love our story. It resonates with them. And that's what gets them to try a first cup. We're different-looking, different-feeling."

The fun that the brothers now have in weaving their Russian heritage throughout the Dazbog brand belies the real hardships they encountered. In the Soviet Union, Leonid was taunted at school, made to stand up in class so he could be pointed at because he was Jewish. As a 9-year-old newcomer to the U.S., he was an outcast because he couldn't speak English.

"People ask me why I don't know a lot of day-to-day sayings that a lot of Americans know," says Leonid, who graduated from CU-Boulder in 1992 with a degree in finance/accounting. "I don't, because when my...