As an executive in charge of divisions at such companies as Revlon and Colgate-Palmolive, Scott Plail, ’79 BS Hotel Administration, had spent a lot of time flying from his California home to various points across the country. On one of those weary trips, he slurped a coffee so good that it inspired him to start his own company.

“I was tired of the corporate grind,” says Plail, no pun intended, “so I decided to venture off on my own. I discovered a coffee product on the East Coast that no one on the West Coast had.”

Coffee became the central product for the specialty foods distribution company Plail launched in 1991 by combining his experience in the hospitality and consumer products industries with an entrepreneurial drive. But just as he was building a customer base for the premium cup of joe, the manufacturer’s quality began to dip. “I just couldn’t accept that. I knew I could do better.”

After a year’s worth of research into growing, roasting, flavoring, and packaging coffee, Plail launched Black Mountain Gold Coffee Co. in Lake Forest, Calif. It now has nearly 60 regular employees and sells its product in more than 6,500 grocery stores in North America. In 2004, it was the top-selling coffee product on Amazon.com, and sales from the company’s own website are brisk, with regular customers in countries around the globe.

To carve out a niche apart from the billion-dollar giants, the company focused on two things: cutting-edge packaging to preserve freshness and proprietary flavorings that truly taste like the foods they’re meant to evoke, such as “cinnamon crumb cake” and “Southern pecan.”

The flavoring for the café mocha variety was actually based on Plail’s own recipe for tiramisu. “It took me 15 years to perfect my recipe,” says Plail, who at one time thought he would be a chef. “Once I had it down, I actually made it from scratch and shipped it to my flavoring maker. The flavor has to be perfect if you want to keep the customer.”

He’s also built a loyal following through packaging in one-pot portions that seal in the fresh, batch-roasted Arabica beans. “Coffee is very much parallel with wine making,” Plail says. “The flavor of the coffee goes back to how and where it’s grown, the soil conditions, how it’s harvested. Then it has to be processed properly. The smallest difference, like the moisture in the air when the coffee’s roasted, can be a huge factor in the flavor.”

But, unlike wine, coffee does not get better with age. Those beans in the bins at the grocery store? They’re well on their way to becoming rancid, Plail says. And the stuff in the can is no better — it’s stale before you even get out the can opener. “The difference between stale and fresh coffee is tremendous,” he explains. “Most people don’t realize that they’re drinking stale coffee.”

This year, Black Mountain Gold Coffee introduced its one-cup “pod” product as well as a corporate coffee-service program for companies because “there’s no reason that employees should be complaining about how terrible the coffee is at work.” And soon the company will launch a custom coffee-service program for a major resort company. Plail developed that program using connections he made in the hotel industry soon after earning his degree from UNLV’s William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.

Next on the horizon is a patented process for preserving the antioxidants in the raw coffee beans. “Coffee has the highest level of antioxidants of any substance on earth, but when you roast it at 450 degrees, those wonderful antioxidants are destroyed,” Plail says.

This spring he also spent time traveling to Africa to help local villagers market their products. Plail hopes to promote native crafts through coffee gift baskets and in the future wants to establish processing plants in the countries from which he buys coffee. That, he says, will not only improve the quality of the coffee, it will provide a higher level of living for the growers.

The San Clemente resident also sits on the board of directors for a men’s ministry and works with the Salvation Army to employ homeless people.

“As a company, we try to be good corporate and global citizens — and that goes beyond making sure the local villagers get a fair price for their coffee beans,” he says. “My experience in the coffee industry has shown me firsthand the plight of people. Going to a village in Chiapas (Mexico) or seeing how AIDS has affected villagers in Africa grabs at your heart. They live on so little. You can’t see that and then not use your resources to help.”