Today we’d like to introduce you to Abigail Melton

Abigail , we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

I started in the coffee industry over a decade ago, and the freshman girl who showed up to work that day didn’t like coffee, was scared to talk to the customers, and had no idea how her part-time barista job could make any real difference. But when life started falling apart for me in high school, I found something incredible at that coffee shop bar that would be the catalyst for the person I am today: coffee and conversation. Over that bar I learned the power that a well-served cup of coffee and an authentic conversation could have on a person’s life and that lesson redefined my entire journey. It’s why I fell in love with the industry and decided to open up my own coffee shop and roastery. So in the spring of 2021, while in my final semester of college, my capstone project turned into a real life business venture. Looking back, that entire season of life feels like a blur. I had recently moved back to my hometown, was finishing up my degree, working full time, and then trying to figure out how to start a business.

My first season at the coffee shop was pretty much head-down, running hard, and praying that I was making the “right calls” so that the business didn’t flop. Thankfully, it was an incredible first season and I closed for the winter that September. That winter my life would hit the lowest point it ever had. I spent the next couple of months barely leaving my house, battling intense anxiety, and trying to fight for my struggling marriage. In January, my marriage collapsed, and I faced season two with entirely different life circumstances than I would have ever anticipated. The business that had been optional to work before was now the only thing that I brought with me into the new unknown chapter I was entering, so the pressure for it to be successful increased significantly. Through the next couple of years, Redemption continued to grow. We’ve expanded our roastery to e-commerce sales and we now ship directly to customers all year long. Last year we started another branch of the business called Cultivate Events. We had the opportunity to host a variety of community events which was incredible, including a fundraiser for a new non-profit starting in our county which was able to raise over $17,000! We also just launched a podcast, Beyond the Bar, in April of 2024. So it’s been a wild crazy ride, but a very good one.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. For anyone who’s seeing this and is an entrepreneur this should resonate, but so much of owning a business is entangled with your personal life. That being said, trying to navigate managing, growing, and leading a business while navigating through personal trauma, health issues, loss, and unexpected life pivots is massively challenging. It’s extremely difficult to know how to set boundaries, where to push through and where to let yourself be okay not being okay. I didn’t have a lot of people in my life who had experience in entrepreneurship so I also just found the road really lonely. Anxiety so high that you don’t want to leave your house, watching your marriage unravel, etc. it’s all heavy stuff and trying to figure out how to process through even one of those things is a lot, but to do that and then still need to show up and put in the insane hours that are required when you first start a business is another thing! It was an extremely messy road, shed more tears at work then I’d care to admit, and looking back most of that season feels pretty blurry. There was a lot of extra supernatural grace for that time of life I think, but deep down I just knew that I didn’t want my personal traumas to define me for forever so there was an inherent grittiness that I think is necessary, and helpful, if you are going to be an entrepreneur.
I wouldn’t at all say that I walked out that season perfectly, but I would say that I learned a lot about myself, about healing, and about doing hard things. All of those lessons have proved to be invaluable in life and business. I don’t think you even have to be an entrepreneur or business owner to relate to the struggle of trying to show up when you are really struggling with something personally. A couple pieces of advice that I would give to someone in a similar position would be…

Do hard things. You can do hard things, it might not feel like it, but even if you’re doing it with tears in your eyes you can make it through this too.
Find your people. Trying to do everything independently just isn’t going to serve you the best. So find the people who can come alongside you, believe for you when you can’t, and help you move forward.
Hold onto hope. When things are so heavy on your shoulders I think hope is one of the easiest things to lose, but it’s so necessary to conquer and come out the other side a better human. So do whatever you have to do to not lose your grasp on hope, even if that means lean against others to hope for you when you can’t!

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?

Redemption is such an expression of my heart and passion for people. As I mentioned before, I fell in love with the coffee industry, because of how I watched it connect people. It still blows my mind how something so seemingly insignificant, like a cup of coffee, really can transform someone’s day if just done with intention. Redemption is about a lot more than just good cups of coffee now, but at the core of Redemption our heartbeat is coffee, community, impact. Everything we do is centered around these three things. Our shipping container-turned-seasonal coffee shop is a very tangible picture of how something can be redeemed to be a picture of hope. Redemption is really my story, and I’ve found that a lot of people have their own versions of “redemption stories.” I think at the end of the day we are all looking for a little hope, a place that feels safe, and people who can cheer us on in this life and help us make it and that’s what Redemption is all about.

I’m insanely proud of the relationships we’ve gotten to build through this business. People will always be my passion so it could be serving up a latte at the shipping container, sending out roasted coffee with a handwritten note to a customer’s door, meeting at a Cultivate event, or having someone listen to a killer conversation on the podcast Beyond the Bar. I just love connecting with people, bringing encouragement, and watching the impact that can have.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?

Honestly, I think that staying true to your why is so important to being successful. Defining success is such a personal question and I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all definition which is why I think it’s so important for you to know your personal why. Why are you doing this business? Why are you working at 8:00 pm or why are you not working at 8:00 pm. It’s insanely clarifying to know what’s important to you, where you want to go in life, what you want life to look like, what “success” means to you because it ends up working like a filter that you can use to process decisions. In life, but specifically as an entrepreneur, you are going to be faced with choices all the time! If you don’t have a way of quickly and accurately discerning through decisions it’s really difficult to ever step forward confidently. For me, I’ve done a lot of work on defining my values, what’s important to me, what I want life to look like, etc. which helps me be able to quickly assess decisions within my business and personal life and decide if they align with where I’m going or if they are just a distraction. In a world that is constantly throwing distractions at you I think this is invaluable and has helped me navigate personal trauma in ways that allowed me to heal all while still moving forward and growing a business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.redemptioncoffeehouseandroastery.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redemptioncoffeehouse.roastery/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redemptioncoffeehouse.roastery
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdxEQWjJZdl-Y-abH3gUSJA