At first glance, Deep Time in Asheville, North Carolina, seems like most other coffee shops. Mercy Rodriguez, the store’s operations manager, oversees the cozy, warm-hued space, stocks the inventory and liaises with the clients who buy Deep Time’s bags of beans. The espresso machine hisses loudly as a barista squeezes a bottle of chocolate sauce to make a mocha. The smell of ground beans permeates the cafe, whose red and yellow walls are adorned with painted brown coffee beans and the slogan, “Deep Time, Not Hard Time.”
But Deep Time, which is located in the basement of Trinity United Methodist Church, is more than just another coffee shop: it’s a ministry that employs people, like Rodriguez, who have been impacted by the criminal justice system.
“I was going to be judged on my past,” Rodriguez tells The Progressive, describing the difficulties she faced in finding a job after being incarcerated. “I was trying to get any boost up that I could.”
Dustin Mailman, Trinity’s pastor of family ministries and missions and Deep Time’s founder, tells The Progressive that he has witnessed the ways unsheltered homelessness, unmet health needs, and incarceration can impact a person’s livelihood. Instead of centering a “reactive approach” as Mailman says many faith communities, businesses, and nonprofits have done, he wanted to address the deeper systemic issues leading to poverty and its impacts. “I’m looking to mitigate the number of crises that are happening” in the first place, such as the struggle for consistent access to medical care or housing, he says.
Mailman took inspiration from Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit founded by Father Gregory Boyle whose work includes providing workforce training to people impacted by gang violence and connecting them with jobs such as screenprinting and solar panel installation. For an Asheville-based organization, Mailman landed on coffee roasting; as a minister who often meets people for coffee, he knew that coffee shops bring people together. Plus, he’d previously sold coffee called the Second Chance Blend in another community.
In 2023, Mailman put his plan into action, first by speaking with people who have lived experience on re-entry and homelessness and folks who are long-term stakeholders in the community, like business owners. In order to learn about coffee roasting, he purchased himself a home roaster the size of a small blender, with which he could roast 180 grams of coffee at a time. He had taken a couple classes on coffee roasting but it was “a lot of trial and error,” he says.
Initially selling about 400 of his own bags of beans at $14 each, Mailman says he was able to use the funds to pay bonds for people he knew from homelessness organizations and “from under various bridges in Asheville,” as well as to send one person to detox. Eventually, a coffee shop in Asheville sold him its former roaster, a larger one that roasts ten kilograms at a time.
After recruiting participants through homelessness organizations in Asheville, Deep Time began teaching them how to roast in a room in the church’s basement. Trinity’s church elders eventually gave their approval for Deep Time to transform a former Sunday school room into the cafe space; with a new coat of paint, it opened in May.
Deep Time’s Sojourner program, which is the main program the organization offers, began about six months later. The Sojourner program is an at least nine-month opportunity for people returning home from incarceration and young people who live in a high-crime, high-poverty area. All participants begin as stipend-funded interns and receive workforce development skills, including training on coffee roasting. Folks who make it through nine months become Sojourner Leads and mentor new Sojourners. Over the past year and a half, the Sojourner program has had forty participants. But, as Mailman notes, not all participants graduate: “Recidivism is also a corrosive, infectious reality.” In this way, too, the program doesn’t operate like other employers if a worker returns to substance use, commits an act of violence, or brings a gun onto the church’s campus. “We don’t fire anyone,” he explains. “We just say ‘take a break.’ ” If a participant relapses, for example, Deep Time expects that person will detox and return to the program after a three-month break. About four people have recidivized, Mailman says.
Jessica Wakeman
Lead barista Shilone Knight makes a coffee at Deep Time, November 2025.
Rodriguez has been “the star of showing the power” of the organization, Mailman says. A Navy veteran, Rodriguez lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, when she says she began using drugs, “lost my kids to the system, and went down through a journey of addiction and depression.” She was then incarcerated for five years, and was eventually released in March 2024.
“I knew that I didn’t want to go back to Wilmington because all I knew was people involved in drugs and that kind of lifestyle,” she says.“I wanted to make a change in my life.” A friend of hers suggested she stay at Transformation Village in Asheville, a shelter serving unhoused women at Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry. During a dinner, Rodriguez met another woman who was working for Deep Time, and made introductions.
Like many of the 650,000 people who are released from incarceration each year and struggle with re-entry, Rodriguez had difficulty finding work. “I knew it was going to be hard,” she says. “I just didn’t realize how hard it would be.” She had charges for attempted trafficking of drugs, as well as for gun and drug possession, which she thinks may have spooked potential employers. “When you do have a criminal history, they frown on that,” she says. “They don’t want to take that risk and hire someone that’s not going to pan out or be an asset to their company.”
But Deep Time found her to be an asset; she’s one of three employees who have been promoted to a Sojourner Lead, then head barista, and then, in Rodriguez’s case, to operations manager. “They saw the potential in me,” she says. “The promotions I’ve been given at Deep Time have been something I’ve never been able to accomplish before because of drug addiction and unstable housing. [Now] I have people that I’m in charge of, that are reliant on me to keep things running here.” Mailman calls promotions “equal parts potential and voiced interest in continuing with us.”
Deep Time strives to be more than a second-chance employment opportunity—it also needs to undergird participants’ lives with resources for trauma-informed support, Mailman says. “We’re committed to people’s social determinants of health being met,” he explains, noting all participants are connected with a community health worker and a mental health specialist, who can help participants with tasks like attaining a General Educational Development degree or getting a driver’s license.
“They help you get your life in order,” says Rodriguez, who is now cleared to get her license again and has saved money to buy a car. She also recently moved out of Transformation Village into her own apartment.
Rodriguez says her work at Deep Time has empowered her in other ways, too. Previously, she’d been unable to help her children out financially—but this year, she was able to offer help when her daughter’s car got towed. “‘I’m going to take care of you’—it was never an option before,” Rodriguez recalls. “Now I’m in a position to.”
Programs like Deep Time aren’t a cure-all. But, Rodriguez says, “There should be a lot more programs like Deep Time. Speaking from personal experience, I can say it’s rough out there.”