Last March, a new coffee shop opened for business in Salem’s downtown, on 4th Street. The shop, owned and operated by husband-and-wife Jess and Julie Ashton, offers locally roasted espresso coffee, teas, smoothies, and home-baked goods. Guests can enjoy their treats to go, or relax inside the dining area, which also features a stage for live music.
Jess, who is a Navy veteran, says that he had first visited Salem on a hunting trip while touring the United States in 1990.
“I was cruising around 20-plus states in America for about 15 years, doing mobile tattooing. We really wanted to see America, and got the opportunity to,” said Jess. “The longer that we toured out west and where we were, the more attractive that my 1990 hunting spot got to me, you might say.”
When the opportunity arose to return to Salem, Jess says he took it.
“The more time that we spent here, our love of coffee caught up with us,” said Jess. “Being military, stationed out at San Diego, I really got to try Starbucks when they were at the competing roaster level. When they were competing and roasting, it was a different ball game, and the more that they turned into a chain store, the less their flavor was there.”
Jess says he comes from a high-level culinary background, having worked as a sous-chef at his family’s restaurant at 15. He said that the more he explored his passion for coffee, he realized there was a need for good coffee in the local area.
“Once we started looking into coffee; because we have that love for coffee, and we’re looking at being in this small town of Salem, Missouri for our retirement spot; the more we knew I had to do something,” said Jess. “We would try driving to neighboring towns and getting a good cup, and it was just impossible. So, in order to get that, we knew that we’d have to get that flavor ourselves.”
To get that flavor he desired, Jess began experimenting with roasting his own coffee around three and a half years ago.
“I thought it was going to be like roasting popcorn. It was nothing comparable,” he said.
The more Jess explored roasting, and as he looked back on his gourmet experience, he said he realized a lot about the subtleties of the process, which he says many mass-roasted beans lose.
“It is such a fragile thing to cook! Seconds, mere seconds in heat, can completely change the flavor that you’re going to get as an ending result of the bean. Most people do not realize these things,” he said. “The more that we got into it, the more I started searching for that flavor of back in the day, that I had when I was in the military still and had the opportunity to go to France and Italy.”
Jess began experimenting with various beans and roasts, and realized there are many intricate details that dictate the flavor of the beans.
“The more I started looking for that flavor, I quickly realized that the Arabica bean, even the soil it grows in makes a difference. So, the flavor of our American beans that we all taste and stuff, are all Columbian varieties, south American, and stuff like that. The big grow areas are down there, and it’s just cheaper for us to source it,” said Jess. “When you get over to France, and Italy, and the rest of Europe, they’re doing the same as us, they’re sourcing from their continent. You get a lot of Africa, and all this stuff. So, I started trying to roast their origin of beans, trying to get that flavor from having spent a little bit of time around that culture.”
His hard work began to pay off, with the flavors getting closer and closer to what Jess desired. He said along the way, he realized that there are aspects of the American style of roasting that other countries find strange or incorrect. He used the example of France, where he was even told that the American way of roasting and brewing coffee was “disrespectful”. Now, he defers to cultures that have been roasting coffee a lot longer than the United States.
“They will try to tell you a lot of times that the level of roasted I've got to, going by American standards, is over developed,” said Jess. “I just kind of started shrugging on America's idea of what coffee roasting was and go into a country that was hundreds of years older and coffee roasting.”
After opening the businesses, the Ashtons say that the reception by the community has been good, with many five-star reviews coming in.
“I hit my 50th one the other day on my five-star reviews,” said Jess. “And, people are taking the time to really write when they're on my reviews. I'm very proud of that. They will go into these exceptional little stories to clarify exactly what their experience was, and that's very blessed and wonderful.”
Jess and Julie say they are dedicated to providing high-quality, organic items at a reasonable price, and hope to be able to grow the business further in the future.
“Everything in house is organic only. It’s about the quality being something that’s a little bit more, and we just try to keep it in a competitive price range,” said Jess. “Everything is going well, and we’re very proud of our little community here.”
