Jim Young fell in love with coffee when he was 18 while he was in Germany.
After joining the military in 1983, he shipped out to Germany during the Cold War. He was a sturdy boy, raised by a single mother who spent her whole life earning an hourly wage.
Before going to Germany, Young didn’t think much about coffee, except when he made it every morning for his first sergeant in infantry school in Columbus, Georgia.
“Whoever had fire watch that morning, at 0330 the first sergeant would come in and he had to have his coffee ready,” Young said. “He had a particular way he wanted it made.”
Young would brew it using an instant coffee pot with Folgers or Maxwell House and would add salt in the water to soften it and improve the taste of the coffee — a tip he learned from first sergeant.
After basic training, Young finally got sent to Germany where he visited the cities and their bakeries and diners. But he had one thing on his mind.
“What's in these little cups that they're, they're sipping with their pinkies up and stuff?” Young said.
Turns out inside those little cups was espresso — one fluid ounce of concentrated coffee forced out of beans with hot pressured water. Ever since Young took a sip from one of those tiny cups he said he was hooked. The richness, the bitterness, the smoothness and the warmth are still ingrained in his taste buds.
“It was just something everybody did in the morning, and that taste for that espresso then has stuck with me,” Young said.
Young stayed in Germany, serving in the army in a readiness unit for the next five years and prepared to go into action in a moment’s notice. He was honorably discharged in 1988, married his wife Karry and he went into the workforce when he got back to the U.S.
Hopping between a factory job and unemployment, Young finally found some job stability when he started his own business in 1989. He ran an electronics store selling home theater setups and stereo systems.
Young stuck with this job for 28 years doing the same thing over and over.
Consultation, installation, rinse and repeat.
Consultation, installation, rinse and repeat.
Consultation, installation, rinse and repeat.
Until one day he stopped loving it.
“I just,” Young said defeated, “it got to where I didn't like it. It became a job, and I didn't like it anymore.”
So, Young returned to his first love, the one before his first job and before his wife. Young returned to coffee.
Two alchemists
Before Young closed his electronics store, he bought an at-home coffee roaster. He spent his mornings and evenings, before and after work with it.
Young would tinker away with coffee beans in his roaster like a scientist. He’d hypothesize, change variables, execute and collect data all in the quest to make a good cup of coffee.
“That little roaster would get hot,” said Young, remembering his first few batches of home roasted coffee. “You just learn how extreme you can go with the coffee, as far as the roasting and how the temperature and time affect the flavor of the beans and whatever territory you're getting the beans from.”
He experimented with beans from Brazil, Colombia and Ethiopia, searching for the best taste. He added salt to the ground beans and the water used to press the coffee, just like his first sergeant taught him to. Young said this makes the coffee sweeter and activates other taste receptors on the tongue.
He started bagging his home roasted coffee and giving it to people when he started to think he could do this full time. Young said he had always wanted a coffee or jazz bar when he was younger and maybe now was the time to fulfill that dream as he rediscovered his love for coffee. In what was once his electronics store, Young gutted out his equipment, installed a bathroom, put a full-fledged coffee roaster in the back of the store and started to renovate.
It wasn’t just Young’s life that changed because of his decision. His wife, Karry Young’s, life would change as well.
Karry had spent her life giving to others. She had spent 30 years taking care of people’s hair, making them feel happy and beautiful.
She is a plump woman with her hair always in a bun, her thick glasses pushed up the bridge of her nose and an apron draped over her clothes. She smells like cinnamon and clove and is never surprised by her husband. Jim’s mom introduced them when he was 21 and she was 17, and they dated for nine and a half years before they got married.
Karry also has a core memory of coffee from when she grew up in Michigan.
“We cut wood and the only breaks you got were to go to that Stanley coffee pot my
Dad had,” Karry said. “We started drinking coffee from a young age. I was 8 or 9, and my brothers were probably 5 and 6. And still, to this day, when we have a meal, one of us is throwing a pot of coffee.”
When Jim told her he was opening a coffee shop in the electronics store, her first thought was “OK, let’s do it.”
“I wasn’t shocked,” Karry said. “He had actually been talking about it for a while, and he’s been roasting at home. He’s got ideas all the time.”
But the surprises didn’t stop there. After turning the store into a coffee shop, Jim bought convection ovens from a baker in the area so they could sell homemade baked goods. Guess who would bake those? Karry, of course, who never baked before in her life. There’s a first time for everything.
The same way Jim fell in love with coffee in Germany all those years ago, Karry fell in love with baking and working. She enjoys the precision and creating new pastries for customers to try.
In April 2018, after remodeling, hiring staff and building a menu, Salvation Coffee opened.
Salvation now
Jim is now in his late 50s. He’s still as sturdy as an ox, his hair turning gray and dull with age, his glasses framing his eyes and red blotches covering the right side of his wrinkled face. Salvation Coffee has been open for six years with Jim roasting coffee and Karry baking in the back.
The inside of Salvation Coffee is dark. Warm golden light greets customers when they walk through the doors. The shop is lined with all-black interior paired with lighter wooden tables. A metal bar top stands between the employees and the patrons. Baristas rush behind it, cranking out beverages for the morning rush, dancing around each other, pumping syrups and pouring milk. Jim has exchanged fluorescent lighting in exchange for large factory lamps to welcome the office workers, teachers and retail employees about to spend eight hours in their workplace.
A scoreboard behind the bar features bright bulbs that spell out “CO” under home, “FF” under time and “EE” under visitors – COFFEE. What a way to let the customer know what they are getting.
The black walls are decorated with animals. A bison head, adorned with a black stretchy headband, watches over the patrons.
Further back there’s another animal — a moose that sees every patron who walks in and out of that front door and sits down at the tables or the plush couches in the back adorned with animal hide.
The line in front moves steadily to get their morning fix as customers are faced with the routine of coffee.
Step one:
“Hi! What can I make for you?” the barista asks. Her jet-black hair is pulled back into a ponytail, her thick-rimmed glasses make her eyes look doe-eyed. She’s dressed in a black T-shirt, dark washed jeans and a flannel that rests on top of her shoulders for good measure.
She takes the order, the customer pays, and she gets to work.
Step two:
The barista grinds the coffee beans into a fine powder that is deposited into the portafilter from the coffee grinder placed on the inside corner of the bar. This is the small metal dish with a black handle that connects to the espresso machine.
She locks the portafilter into the machine and it’s flooded with hot water as the espresso is pulled from the grounds. The byproduct seeps into the paper cup below it. The once clear water is now dark brown, rich with caffeine and ready to be turned into a drink.
The portafilter is unlocked. The grounds dumped, now useless for the barista. She adds the milk of choice and any syrups needed to execute the order.
Step three:
“I got a decaf 007 with almond milk,” the barista shouted. The customer picks it up.
The staff at Salvation repeat through this consistent cycle from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. every Monday through Saturday and on Sundays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the past six years.
One of the most consistent faces in Salvation Coffee is Kourtney Young, Jim and Karry’s oldest daughter.
Kourtney has an attitude. Not the kind of attitude you have when you’re fighting with your parents. The kind of attitude that tells everyone in a room, “I know what I’m doing, and I’m good at what I do.”
She stands behind the bar every day except Tuesdays, and don’t even think about calling her on Tuesdays. In her black leggings and Salvation Coffee T-shirt, she makes drinks for the customers that walk through those glass doors and trains the staff on drinks and other operations. Her dyed blood-red hair is always in a ponytail to keep it out of her face. Making a drink, switching out the nitro kegs or taking orders at the front, if it’s happening in the front of the house then Kourtney is probably the one doing it.
She worked at a Starbucks in Virginia Beach for 16 years until she moved to the top of the ranks but Starbucks wasn’t willing to increase her pay. One day she got a call from her father, who asked if she wanted to work at the coffee shop they opened. She packed up and moved back to her hometown to work with her family.
“The coffee comes. I'm good at people,” Kourtney said.
But Kourtney is still very involved with the coffee, constantly experimenting with new drinks for Salvation.
“Remember when I told you I ordered that milk,” said Kourtney, placing a paper cup in front of her dad.
“Oh yeah, what was it?” Jim asks.
“Maple walnut milk,” Kourtney said. “It smells good, but it doesn’t really like have a distinct-like taste though.”
“You know what that would be good on? Some cinnamon toast crunch.”
“It’s not that expensive. It's the same price as the oat milk case for half the product.”
“Let’s do it.”
The family unit
“I didn't imagine us working together,” Karry said. “I wouldn't imagine working with my kids either.”
As Karry runs back and forth from the kitchen to the front of the house carrying boxes of baked goods, Kourtney is behind the bar making drinks and teaching the staff how to take care of things behind the bar.
Meanwhile Jim is in the back, working away at his beans; listening for the pop that lets him know the roasting process has begun, checking to make sure they’re getting enough color in the roaster and adjusting the temperature as needed. Just Jim in the back with his beans.
Jim doesn’t plan to close Salvation anytime soon, and Karry and Kourtney don’t want him to. The worker bees in the hive of Salvation love what they do as much as Jim loves it too.
Jim enjoys sitting in the back, roasting his beans and seeing the same people walk into Salvation. Karry is grateful for the work, her new passion for baking and the employees who have become like her children. She cooks for the staff everyday, each meal reminding them that they are family. Kourtney loves the people. She knows all the orders of the regular customers who walk through Salvation’s door. Regardless of the future, the routine in Salvation continues for Jim and Karry and Kourtney.
For Jim:
Come in at 8 a.m.
Roast the coffee beans.
Cool them down.
Label the cans for coffee beans.
For Karry:
Come in at 3 a.m.
Turn on the ovens.
Catch up on baked goods.
Make breakfast for the kids.
For Kourtney:
Come in at 3 a.m.
Restock the syrups.
Check the dates on the milks.
Test out new flavors.
***Note: Don’t bother her on Tuesdays. It’s her day off.
Jim says that if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.
That’s why he changed careers.
That’s why he opened Salvation — to rekindle one of his first loves.
Now, he gets to do what he loves with the people he loves — his wife, his daughter and his new family.
And when he stops loving this, he’ll move on and find his next love.