Driving west along the banks of the Kanawha River, you can’t help but admire the scenery. No, this wasn’t your plan for the day…getting rerouted off the interstate on your trip west to an afternoon meeting in Kentucky…but the blue skies and shimmering green waters of the river make it seem like a good turn of events.
“It’s 10:15 here in the Capital City…and traffic on 64 West is still tied up from that early morning accident,” says the upbeat voice of the DJ coming over your car stereo. “Definitely want to take Route 60 if you need to get somewhere soon.”
Well, it’s a good thing you had your GPS on this morning. Doing the math in your head, you realize that you are still somewhat ahead of schedule for your meeting, and your caffeine cravings tell you that you are way behind schedule when it comes to your daily coffee intake.
“Siri, find nearby coffee shops,” speaking to your smartphone in the same way you would talk to someone sitting next to you in the car.
“Here’s what I’ve found,” comes the response in the now familiar voice. “Coal River Coffee Company. 64 Olde Maine Plaza, Saint Albans, West Virginia. Would you like directions?”
“Yes.”
Within minutes, you are directed off the four laned highway to the center of a small town. The oak-lined streets, blocks of neatly kept homes, and a smattering of small shops and restaurants almost create a Mayberry-like first impression.
“Turn right onto Olde Main Plaza…and the destination is on your right,” come your virtual instructions, and you swear they almost sound more cheerful than usual.
As you walk into the quaint shop, your eyes are drawn to the beautiful, exposed brick wall to your right, with its collection of small paintings and plaques. An old piano sits on the opposite wall, tucked in between bookshelves and small, wooden tables. As you approach the counter, you see a small framed award by the register — “Best of West Virginia 2021 by WV Living Magazine Winner — Best Coffee Shop”. This may have been a fortuitous turn of events that led to your detour today.
“Good morning! What can I help you with today?” comes the sharp, cheerful voice of the young man behind the counter. “Have you been here with us before?”
“No, actually. I’m driving through on the way to Lexington and got routed off the interstate because of an accident,” you explain. “Was just looking for somewhere to get my coffee fix and your place popped up.”
“Well, we’re glad you stopped. I’m Michael Ervin – my wife Rachel and I own the shop,” he explains with a tone of voice so friendly that it immediately reinforces the feelings you had while driving the streets through town. “We roast all of our coffee beans right here in house, and Rachel’s pastries are all freshly made.”
As your new acquaintance finishes his sentence, a young woman walks from the back to behind the counter, and you know right away she has to be Rachel from the invisible connection you immediately sense between the two – one that can only be shared by a husband and wife.
“You must be Rachel?” taking a chance that your instincts are correct.
“Yes, I am,” she says in a voice as cheerful as Michael’s, as she flashes a bright smile at him and then back to you.
At this point, the deep, rich aroma of fresh coffee mixed with a cocktail of sweet scents of vanilla and cinnamon and sugar and chocolate have kicked your cravings into high gear. Your eyes dart quickly back and forth across the chalkboard menu on the wall.
“Well, I am definitely in need of some coffee…I’ll take a large of whatever you have brewed this morning…and I won’t need any room for cream,” you say to your host.
With a quick smile, Michael steps away to pour a steaming hot, dark cup of morning liquid gold. “This is one of the original beans we started roasting when we started out – they’re from Uganda,” explains Michael. The sound of pride in his voice hints that there might be more to the story, and your natural inquisitive instincts are primed.
“So how long ago did you open this place?” It’s the first question you can think of to further break the ice and hopefully open the door to the story lurking here inside the four walls of Americana that you have somehow found yourself in this fall morning.
“Well…we opened here in…,” Michael pauses just briefly to glance at Rachel, “July, 2018.”
“Yes, but there’s a lot more to it than that,” she adds, further priming your curiosity.
“I’d love to hear about it,” you blurt out almost too quickly, and you feel your cheeks warm slightly with embarrassment from your overly enthusiastic response. Trying to regain some semblance of normalcy, you continue, “I’m on the road today and have a little time to kill on the way. I’d love to hear about this place…there’s just something about a little coffee shop run by a husband and wife in a small town like this…”
Trying to help you break the awkwardness you obviously feel, Michael graciously cuts you off, “Sure, I’d love to tell you a little bit of our story. We had a little slogan when we opened the shop – it’s actually the tagline on our website – ‘Roasting Coffee – Brewing Community’. If you’re interested in hearing about our little dream in our little town, we’d love to tell you about it.”
Michael and Rachel Ervin — owners of Coal River Coffee Company in St. Albans, West Virginia.
Sitting down at a small wooden table with four chairs, Michael begins speaking as if he were talking to someone he had known for years and not a stranger who had just walked into his coffee shop minutes earlier. “So where do you want me to start?”
“Well, like Glenda said in the Wizard of Oz, it’s always best to start at the beginning…,” you say trying awkwardly to be clever.
Michael smiles and begins his story right away, “Rachel and I both grew up in Saint Albans, near the Coal River. We both left for college, and I lived in Chicago and other parts of the world. I always saw myself living in a big city – living the dream.”
Thinking you already know the answer, you ask, “So, did you have plans of being an entrepreneur, then?”
“Definitely not. I never would have IMAGINED being an entrepreneur – much less being a coffee roaster. Five years ago, I was in a job that I thought would be my dream job,” he explains, “and I thought it was the type of thing I would be doing forever.”
From the corner of your eye, you notice a young woman in a apron move behind the counter, and with the barista returning from her break, Rachel walks the short distance to your table to join you and Michael.
“Well, you ARE doing what you were meant to do,” Rachel seamlessly adds to the conversation. “We just didn’t know what it would look like at the time.”
“True,” Michael agrees.
“So, HOW did you end up back here in West Virginia if you had big city dreams?”
“After we got married, we both just started to feel the ‘strings of home’ kind of calling us back,” responds Michael. “We didn’t come back to Saint Albans, though. We lived on the East End of Charleston.”
“And loved it there,” adds Rachel.
Barely a minute into your conversation, you already feel like you’re having coffee with longtime friends, and the way that Michael and Rachel help complete each other’s thoughts with such ease immediately demonstrates their connection.
“We both had family here in Saint Albans,” explains Rachel, “and anytime we would come here to visit, we would always talk about how the Main Street of town was really quaint and cute. We actually had conversations about how someone should open up a little coffee shop here. It seemed like such a great idea, but we never thought it would be us to do it.”
“Well, you obviously ended up doing it…,” you say, stating the obvious. “How did that happen?”
“My mother passed away, along with one of Rachel’s cousins within just a couple of weeks of each other. Through being involved in both of those services, Rachel and I reconnected with some relatives and old friends very unexpectedly. It opened our eyes to how many good people there were still here and how maybe we could come back and help make a difference here.”
Michael looks briefly at Rachel, who then continues, “We decided to move back to Saint Albans – to Michael’s Mom’s house.”
Still wondering where the connection to this amazing coffee that you’re enjoying on this fall morning comes into play, you remember something that Michael briefly touched on earlier in the conversation. “So what was your dream job that you mentioned earlier?”
“Yeah, so I had a couple of different jobs, but the job that I thought was my life’s dream was being a pastor…being a shepherd of people. Revitalization was my dream. I wanted to go into communities and churches that had once been successful and healthy but now were dwindling and about to close up.” Pausing briefly, Michael continues, “My dream was to go into those churches and help breathe life into them. That was really my hope and desire.”
“Oh, wow. So, you were a pastor before becoming a business owner? That’s amazing,” you respond. The warmth and kindness that just seems to emanate from the young couple makes even more sense to you now.
“It was one of those things where although that path didn’t work out like I imagined it would, I was being prepared for something different,” Michael reveals. “What I didn’t realize was happening was that reading about and being part of revitalization in churches was setting me up as being part of a revitalization in my hometown.”
“So that’s where the coffee shop comes into play then?” you ask, anxious to get to that part of the story.
“Well, eventually,” Rachel says, taking her turn again in telling the story. “It started in 2007 when Michael got this small coffee roaster off Amazon to do as a new hobby. I was this tiny little thing that looked like a toaster oven that would roast about a half a pound of coffee at a time. The first couple of batches weren’t any good. When we finally got some that WE thought was really good, we thought ‘I wonder if anyone else would like this?’”
“So I started roasting more coffee and was giving it to friends and family,” picks up Michael. “People were saying ‘this is really good’ and wanted to start buying it from us.”
Right on cue, Rachel continues, “That’s when we started toying with the idea. Michael was working in Charleston and I was a stay at home mom at the time, and we started tossing around the idea of ‘What if we started trying to sell this product? What would that look like?’”
Taking another sip of your coffee, you wonder to yourself if the depth of flavor has somehow intensified…deepened…since the story began. It’s almost like you can somehow sense the love and commitment that has gone into the cup you now hold in your hand.
Many of the creations at Coal River Coffee combine robust flavor with artistic flair.
“This was at the very beginning of 2018,” Michael notes – giving you context for the timeframe. “In February, that’s when we took the kids and went back to Africa…”
“Africa?!?!,” you interrupt, nearly choking on your coffee. “You went BACK to Africa? Ok, I must have missed part of the story!” you laugh.
“Oh, we didn’t tell you that part,” Michael says. “Yes, Rachel and I spent about six months working in Uganda as missionaries before any of our kids were born.”
“We wanted to take our kids there so they could have that experience,” chimes Rachel. “So here we are on this crazy trip half way around the world, with three kids who were six years old and younger, but it was perfect timing, because it gave us two weeks to just think and plan and dream about what this new business might look like.”
With every layer of their story that Michael and Rachel reveal, you are more grateful for a morning of altered travel plans. Instead of a dull, eventless drive along an interstate highway, you have now found yourself transported to the plains of Africa, anxious to hear more.
“While we were there,” Rachel’s words snap your attention back to the story, “we went on a coffee safari, where we got to see how coffee is grown and how it’s processed there. We went to a couple of different coffee farms and roasteries, and we even got to plant coffee trees.”
“We’ve even been able to roast coffee beans here in the shop from the trees we planted,” Michael proudly interjects.
“Ok, that’s amazing,” is all you can add at this point.
“So we flew back into D.C. from Uganda, and on the six hour drive home, Michael says ‘Let’s drive down Old Main on the way home to see if there are any new buildings available,” says Rachel.
“Before we left, we had looked at several spaces for lease – in case we decided that a coffee shop was the right avenue. None of them would have worked for what we wanted, but coming back from our trip to Africa, we knew that we were supposed to open a shop in Saint Albans,” Michael says taking his turn.
Once again, Rachel picks up where he left off, “I said ‘We’ve only been gone two weeks – there’s not going to be anything’, and lo and behold, there was a ‘For Rent’ sign in a building that we had not looked at yet. We later found out that the sign had just been put in the window THAT day.”
“Well, that definitely seems like it was meant to be,” you add into the story.
“So Michael calls the number and leaves a message. The man calls back later and says ‘I’d love for you to have it; I’ve had other people call already, but I’ll give you right of first refusal. Would you want to come take a look at it?’”
Continuing, Rachel explains, “We didn’t know it at the time, but he as actually a friend of Michael’s family. Michael’s grandfather helped this gentleman get into business at the start of his career, so he wanted to return the favor by helping us get started with our dream.”
The charm and appeal of life in a small town enters your thoughts, as does the warmth and comfort of a perfectly brewed cup of coffee. “There are obviously a lot of interconnected pieces in how you all got to where you are today.”
“Oh, it’s been a crazy ride ever since Michael signed the lease,” exclaims Rachel. “Once people heard what we were doing, it was like everyone in the community wanted to help see it through. We had so many people – strangers – wanting to know what they could do. Many of those strangers are now some of our closest friends.”
“We signed the lease in March, and there was so much work that needed to be done to transform a rough, older building into a coffee shop,” Michael explains. “Most people who walked in thought it would be impossible to turn this space into what we envisioned, and honestly, it would have taken a really long time to get there if it hadn’t been for the way people pitched in and helped.”
Rachel working to expose the charm of the orginal brick walls of the space.
“We originally planned on being open in October,” Rachel says. “We signed the lease in March, and believe it or not, we opened up before the end of July. It was really amazing.”
“We even had some local kids from around town that would come in after school just to help sweep and clean up during our build out. It was like they just wanted to be part of something new and good coming to their town,” Michael recounts. “Several of them ended up working for us as baristas.”
That’s when it really starts to sink in for you. From the moment you walked into this place, you sensed a story was here. Now you understand it. This isn’t a story about a little coffee shop or of a young couple chasing their dreams. It’s actually much bigger than that…
It’s a story of a community.
Seeming to read your thoughts, Rachel says, “We love this town. The interesting part about it is that we never thought we would come back here. When we did, we found that it was like a refuge for us.” She smiles at her husband and then back at you. “It was like a supernatural type of change. When we did come back and accept that this is what we are SUPPOSED to do, we have really fallen in love with this town and its people and we want to do our part to make this an even more beautiful place.”
As you now understand is their natural rhythm, Michael picks up, “We love where the town is, but we also love where the town CAN be. So our goal is to embrace it where it is but also be part of bringing it to where it can be in the future. We want this to be a place where kids grow up and say ‘this is where I want to live and raise MY family or start MY business’.”
“Well, obviously the two of you are on the right path,” you respond, knowing that is likely an understatement.
As you finish the last sip of your coffee, the sad reality sets in that it is nearly time to get back on the road to make your afternoon meeting in the neighboring state. “Thank you so much for telling me your story. I think this is the first time in my life that I’m grateful for being rerouted because of traffic problems.”
“Let me get you another cup of coffee to take with you,” Rachel offers and you gladly accept.
While you don’t know when your path may lead you back through this charming town, you somehow know this won’t be the last time you enjoy a story and a cup of coffee with your hosts. In the meantime, you wonder, “Do you sell your coffee anywhere else?”
“Well, you can buy our roasts from our website, if that’s what you mean,” says Michael.
That was just the answer you hoped for, as this will be a coffee you drink for years to come, and you know that anytime you savor a cup made from the beans roasted here in this small Appalachian town that you will be reminded of family and Africa and neighbors helping neighbors and Mayberry…
And, most of all, community.
A special thank you to Michael and Rachel Ervin for the photos for this story.
