ASHEVILLE, N.C. — It's gotten even more difficult for people who were once in prison to find work when they are released, and a ministry in Asheville has found a unique way to help them find employment, one cup at a time. 

“The aroma of the coffee is going to burst throughout the room,” Minister of Social Enterprise Timothy Underwood said.

What You Need To Know

  • According to the state's Department of Commerce, fewer people are finding work after leaving prison in North Carolina, when compared to a little over two decades ago
  • They also found that in 2021, 49% of former inmates were employed within one year after exiting prison
  • Deep Time AVL is a coffee roasting social enterprise that is committed to empowering and employing people impacted by incarceration 

“I always saw coffee as this universal connecting point,” Deep Time Coffee Founding Pastor Rev. Dustin Mailman said.

What lies behind Deep Time’s bags of coffee is a desire for change and empowerment. 

“Through faith, vision, entrepreneurship, equity and story, opportunities are going to be restored to the people who probably didn’t get a chance or probably had that chance, but it had been deprived from them in a certain type of way because of what they were getting into,” Underwood said.

Those opportunities are what a new business Deep Time Coffee AVL has started delivering.

“Everybody buys the coffee, and if they don't buy the coffee, they are still intrigued by the story,” Underwood said.

“What we are trying to do is have this be a coffee roasting social enterprise that is committed to folks impacted by incarceration,” Mailman said. “We have a violence prevention piece, which is for youth and young adults who are at risk of incarceration because they're from a low income or high crime area.”

The North Carolina Department of Commerce found that formerly incarcerated individuals experience poor employment and wage-earning outcomes. In 2021, 49% of former inmates were employed within one year after exiting prison. While on a rise from 31% during the Great Depression, it’s still on an overall decline from 62% in 1997.

Mailman said these numbers are despicable, and he has spent years trying to help change them. He’s spoken at city hall meetings on why this issue should be a priority and strongly believes the community needs more access to holistic resources. 

“There’s not one thing that's going to end homelessness or end recidivism,” Mailman said. “It has to be us coming together as a community and collaborating on many different fronts. So this feels like a critical piece that's missing right now.”

Underwood has been impacted by incarceration and knows Deep Time was the right fit for him.

“I had to be reassured over and over and over again to give me the confidence to step back here and do the work that I'm doing right now,” Underwood said.

That’s why being a mentor is extremely important to him, seeing the impact this mission can have.

“Some had nobody to believe in them and give them hope, and that's where we come in now,” Underwood said. “So, we're giving them hope on a new life.”

“We take our mission super seriously, because we believe that every single person on this Earth is just riddled with potential,” Mailman said.

Even though their coffee journey has just begun, this team has no plan of stopping here. They hope to have an in-person cafe soon to grow this community.

“We have ideas of a food truck,” Mailman said. “We have ideas of a publishing house, a studio for folks to make music. So coffee is where we’re starting, but we see this booming into something much bigger, that will be harder to contain.”