I started getting five-gallon buckets of coffee grounds from Called Coffee for my flower farm.
Not exactly how most customer relationships begin. But that's Jerod.
I first met him in the spring of 2017 at a 5K benefit for international missionaries. He'd just returned from Peru and handed me a free bag of beans he'd roasted himself. A few years later I ran into him again at the Anniston downtown farmers market — this time slinging espresso out of a van. Before the brick and mortar, before the big windows on Quintard Avenue, he was building something mobile and scrappy and determined.
The coffee starts in Peru, with a farmer named Gregorio Torre.
Jerod made a twelve-hour trip into the jungle to find him. He handed Gregorio six thousand dollars in cash — money given to a stranger on a handshake and a conviction that the supply chain between a small Alabama town and a mountain farm in South America was worth building by hand.
Gregorio's family grew the beans. Jerod brought them home and roasted them. The math on specialty coffee is punishing in a specific way: a pound that sells for eight dollars at the counter was probably sold by the farmer for seventy cents. Jerod wanted to close that gap, at least for one family.
Gregorio's son Eddie now runs his own shop in Huancayo. That's what a fair relationship grows into.
Back then I was pastoring in Weaver and would occasionally come to Anniston looking for a third place — somewhere between home and work where you could actually sit with a cup of coffee, get some work done, maybe meet people. Anniston didn't have many options.
Jerod was fixing that.
In 2021 I watched him transform the old Daylight Donuts building on Quintard. I'd taken a job at the Methodist Church two blocks away, so I saw the progress every day. The gutting. The rebuilding. The vision taking shape in real time.
When Called Coffee finally opened, I became a regular. The smell hit you first — beans getting roasted by the sackful, that rich aroma that means someone's doing the work right. I brought my buckets. Those coffee ground runs gave us time to talk.
He let us display mason jar arrangements in the shop. Used Heather's bud vases on the tables. When things got hard for me personally, he checked in. Kept up with me. Showed up.
I sat by the big window at a small table more times than I can count. Working alone, meeting friends, meeting new ones. One afternoon I watched a guy I'd never met strike up a conversation with someone at the next table over croissants and cold brew. By the time I left, they were exchanging business cards.
That's what happens when you build a space where people feel like they belong.
But Jerod doesn't talk about it like he built anything. He doesn't have a brand story or a founding narrative. When I asked him how he got here — from a 5K in 2017 to roasting coffee for a whole city — he said the thing I keep thinking about.
"I was just trying to sell a bag. Still don't know what's next."
Called Coffee is at 1400 Quintard Avenue in Anniston. If you haven't been, go on a Tuesday morning and sit by the window.
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