By Gwen Davis

What are you passionate about?

Jamie Youngblood was a firefighter and EMT for 13 years, since the late 1990s. He loved it. His passion for the profession ran deep. But in 2011, Jamie unfortunately hurt his back. Time went on it and it didn’t get better. Eventually, he had to go in for surgery. It was then that his firefighter career was permanently sidelined. Never again would Jamie be able to engage in his job he so loved.

However, Jamie was resilient. Just because one passion was shattered, Jamie’s drive to find another was not.

That’s how he ended up co-founding the West Seattle Coffee Company.

“I had a great friend who started a roasting company in 2003,” he said. “It was something we were always drawn to. He ended up having a huge influence on me. I took his idea and put my own little spin and twist on it.”

West Seattle Coffee Company roasts beans and delivers them to costumers’ houses or stores.

The company began in 2013. The founding couple, Jamie and Rachel Youngblood, slowly developed their business plan, making sure that it would be sustainable long-term. The company started roasting in 2014. The website and brand building also began at that time.

“We were perfecting our different roasts which we were trying to produce,” Jamie said. “We had a small following of friends and family, and grew organizationally. We gave our coffee out like crazy over the past few years, just trying to build our brand.”

The couple has no plans to turn the company into a corporation like Starbucks.

“Our model is to remain small and stay local,” Jamie said. “We want to create local business partnerships, and supply coffee for the football season, and maybe some of the restaurants. We are trying to be respectful of other roasters, and if people are happy with what they’re using now, we don’t want to step on any toes. But we are working on expanding.”

The company has an unusual facility model. The coffee itself is roasted in a large, secured, multi-use building on Horton Street.

Therefore, customers wouldn’t come to the building to purchase coffee.

“We don’t have a retail front,” Jamie said. “It’s not set up that way.”

However, Jamie and Rachel have an alternative and equally efficient plan.

Twice a week, the couple delivers the coffee straight to people’s houses. Delivery days are every Tuesday and Friday. The coffee is roasted on those days. The amount of time between the roasting of the coffee to delivering it to customers is a matter of hours.

The couple delivers between 4-7 p.m.

“With West Seattle, we start on one end and zig zag our way through,” Jamie said. “At first, people were like, ‘you’re bringing me my coffee?!’ And we built all these friendships which was nice."

Rachel said that as the company grows they would consider having later or earlier hours for delivery. They are also thinking of creating doorstep boxes, like Smith Brothers.

“If it’s raining or something, we want the coffee to be fresh and secure for our customers,” Rachel said. “The box would be something cute.”

However, even if delivery hours were extended, still not everyone can be at his or her doorstep during the delivery times.

“For people in condominium buildings whose hours aren’t working quite right, we make other arrangements,” Rachel said.

One thing that’s great about Seattle is people truly love their coffee.

“It’s neat because you get a sense of belonging and community from it,” Jamie said.

“We do get these people who are like, ‘thank you! This is great!’ It’s great because we’re taking a great product and roasting it and it’s nice when people appreciate it,” Jamie said.

“The air roasting technique we do is not common,” Rachel said. “And it’s a small batch. We’re only roasting eight pounds at a time. It’s a completely different model.”

Jamie explained the process:

“When you roast with an air roaster, it roasts the beans, keeps them in motion and keeps them in hot air,” he said. “What that does is it allows the beans to expand. When beans roast they expand two times double their size. And they lose their skin or chaff. When the chaff comes off, it sucks away. It leaves you with clean, fresh coffee. It's not burnt. That chaff doesn't stay in there. It's really unique and we feel that it's the best coffee roaster out there.”

It took a long time to perfect the mechanism.

The company has five origins of coffee: Guatemalan, Mexican, Sumatra, Columbian and Decaf Honduras.

“We’re really excited about that,” Jamie said. “That’s our base right now. We would definitely like to offer more as grow.”

In fact, soon the company will debut an espresso.

Of course, Seattleites are recycle and local junkies, which Jamie and Rachel know. Therefore, the containers for the coffee are local, all from Washington State.

The labels are compostable.

“We want to keep all our products local,” Rachel said.

However, the company prides itself in its smallness.

“That’s our slogan: we roast hundreds of pounds of coffee a week, not thousands. We are a small batch roaster. We want to roast the best we can, and keep things local and small.”

Like many early-stage of startups, the couple has put more money into company than it has produced. But that will change.

Jamie’s accident turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

It was a rough few years following Jamie’s injury, however he found that it was very easy to spend time with his children when he was stuck on the couch.

“We were thinking, we can we do together?” Rachel said. “We have two kids and we wanted to stay family-oriented. We wanted to be near them. We want to work hard and at the same time be flexible with our family when we need to be.”

“The injury helped us reexamine our priorities,” Rachel said. “While he was hurt he was around our younger daughter a lot, and we wanted to maintain that family time. We loved it.”

And thus, the couple found their new career and passion. It was the silver lining behind the dark cloud.

“It was one of those true, oh my goodness moments were I'm like, ‘what am I going to do?’” Jamie said regarding this accident. “I was very passionate about being a fire fighter and I loved the people and the work. It took me a long time to figure out what was next.

But never let his resiliency die.

“I was passionate about being a firefighter from young adult to midlife, and then switched to something I'm equally passionate about.”

Jamie is no longer a public servant but he still serves the community with his coffee, cup by cup.