ON HOLY GROUNDS

Go into any trendy coffee shop in Wilmington and you’ll find similar aesthetics. There are plants hanging from the walls, local artwork, and the occasional surfboard. You’ll sit on sleek wooden furniture, comfy armchairs or leather couches. Maybe there are a couple bins of vinyl for sale. When you go to check out, you’ll see some flyers for a church youth group. Look closer: in the corner, there’s a group of college students holding their weekly Bible study meeting. 

Many coffee shops in Wilmington have some tie to Christianity. Vigilant Hope, the roastery partnered with the nonprofit of the same name, is the most overt of them. There’s also Dwell House Coffee, a new mobile coffee shop so named from the Scripture that reads, “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” And then there’s the 3:5 Initiative, a new mobile coffee cart that also serves as a bible study on wheels. Their name comes from Exodus 3:5 — “The place where you stand is Holy Ground.” 

Beyond the transparently religious coffee establishments in town, many others are Christian-owned or church-affiliated. Here in the South, faith is a historic and ever-present part of our culture and businesses. But why is it so prominent in coffee shops? 

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, an epicenter of the third wave coffee movement with a long coffee-oriented history. The region was much more secular; both religious diversity and religious apathy were prevalent. When I moved to the South — first to New Orleans, then to Wilmington — one of the first major differences I noticed how deeply Christianity was woven into the cultural fabric of the place. 

In Wilmington, this notion took place in coffee shops. Once I started noticing it, I couldn’t stop. There seemed a direct correlation between good coffee and faith, something underlying that informed everything, from the roasting process to the interior décor of the spaces. I kept wondering: why are Christians so good at making coffee? 

Some reasons felt culturally obvious: the knowledge that some Christians don’t drink, the presence of coffee at almost all church events, or the prominence of mission trips to countries that grow coffee. But as I spoke to people about it, I learned that there’s something much deeper here: an underlying thread, visible to those who seek it, that links the devout to the barista. 

THE RITUAL 

The Fuzzy Needle is a record and bookstore. It’s also a skate shop, a surf shop, music and arts venue, and a coffee shop. It refuses to be defined; it’s more of a vibe than a traditional store centered on consumerism. You walk in and everything feels dusty in a desirable way: old books, the scratch of a record, light filtering in through huge windows onto vintage couches. There’s always an obscure record playing over the speakers, some woodland-folk-jazz thing you’re pretty sure you heard once in a dream. 

That obscure record was probably put on by Taylor Salvetti, the owner of Folkstone Slow Bar. Folkstone is a coffee pop-up inside the Fuzzy Needle that opened in 2024. They boast the classic menu—flat whites, lattes, and the like—as well as local pour overs and creative rotating specials. 

Taylor loves to talk with anyone who comes in to get a coffee. For him, making and selling coffee isn’t about transactions. It’s about building community. Though today he isn’t a “practicing” Christian, his childhood and young adult life in the church shaped his skill set and worldview.  

“I love talking to people, pulling something out of them,” he told me. “In what could be a 45 second interaction, I’m like, how deep can I go with you? If someone is open to speaking with me and going beyond the transaction—that’s huge. That definitely relates to my Christian upbringing…the idea of saving souls was a driving factor for a long time. So I think that urgency comes out in the vessel of making coffee.” 

The names and ingredients on his custom menu of drinks are enough to strike up a conversation. In February, I had the Sleepless in Seattle drink, which was espresso, milk, tiramisu-vanilla sweetbread syrup, and Dutch cocoa powder. A recent drink on their summer menu was called The Inherent Nostalgia of Summer Break. That’s what Taylor wants to do through his coffee—convey a feeling.

I met Taylor one afternoon after he closed. People were milling about the Fuzzy Needle, record shopping and buying vintage T-shirts. We sat drinking coffee together in a cozy back corner on fluffy couches, surrounded by bookshelves filled with vintage literature. When I asked him my driving question about the relationship between Christian faith and coffee making, his eyes lit up behind his round glasses. 

“As Christians, you grow up to basically obsess over your relationship with God and obsess over how that relationship is,” he explained. “It’s something you’re constantly thinking about and praying about. It’s easy to get obsessed about something. So when you’ve got something as deep-rooted as coffee culture, coffee brewing, the brewing process…you’re like, yeah, I could do that.”

Coffee making is inherently process-oriented; equally about each meticulous step as the end result. The beans have to be sourced from an ideal locale, stored properly, finely ground, tampered with just enough pressure, and extracted with care. Taylor sees a deeper parallel here to the Christian mindset, too. 

“In all things, do unto God. So even if you’re just pulling an espresso shot, you imagine you’re doing this for God, and you do it to the best of your ability. Like: let me do this as if there’s a higher calling beyond this thing,” he said. 

He referred to his time growing up in a non-denominational church in the South. He described the archetypal Southern brand of faith as Charismatic Christianity—the sort of faith that is about the active and ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. Within this belief system, spiritual gifts are existent in everyone and encouraged to be exercised. Miracles are not an ancient thing, but things that are happening frequently, things that the everyday person can witness if they only look closely. People in such churches sometimes speak in prophecy. 

Taylor guesses that about 50% of the coffee shops in Wilmington are either loosely or directly Christian affiliated. 

“The ritual of coffee is huge, and when you build a communal experience around ritual, that just makes it more personal,” he said. “All these words—it’s ritualistic, it’s the experience, it’s communal—you could be describing either a church or a coffee shop.” 

IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE COFFEE

Vigilant Hope was born 19 years ago as a grassroots neighborhood outreach on the south side of Downtown Wilmington. In 2021, they opened a roastery and café of the same name on South 16^th Street. 

I met Laura Bullock, the Executive Director, and Devin Coombs, the Director of Social Enterprise, at the café. The space is inside an old brick building typical of that part of town: concrete floors, industrial-paneled walls, the feel of a former warehouse. On the walls are local, coffee-related art, inspirational books on display, hanging plants, and a couple signs that display spiritual, vaguely ominous phrases in all-caps. IN WILMINGTON AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, one says. Another: IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE COFFEE.  

As a nonprofit, Vigilant Hope provides afterschool programs and mobile street outreach for people experiencing homelessness, including regular community meals. They’ve got a robust mobile shower program, which offers showers for Wilmington’s unhoused population. 

“That’s probably what we’re best known for—pancakes and showers,” Laura told me. “We’ve always had a mission of teaching the local faith community how to love its neighbor well. We want to create safe spaces for people who don’t have any other safe space.”

After spending many years on such outreach, the idea of a coffee shop was born out of a vision for more structural and long-term community building.  

“To follow Jesus means to love God and his people. You can’t love someone you don’t know, so we’re relationally driven. But as we’ve done life with people who are wise, brave, and intelligent people, we honestly got tired of helping people survive for the day. We started asking questions like: what does it look like to help communities thrive? What does it look like to build more mutual cross-cultural spaces, where people from different walks of life can share a space?” said Laura. 

Vigilant Hope Roasting is just four years old, but their coffee has made a name for itself as one of the best in the city. At the 2024 Wilmington Coffee Fest, they won Best Roaster by popular vote. The café space hosts their potluck community dinners, as well as movie nights, markets, and pop-ups with local yoga studios. 

The roastery generates funds that support the nonprofit, which empowers it to have funding beyond donations and grants. It also serves as a community space.

“The café is really just an open door to what Vigilant Hope is doing everywhere else outside of the coffee shop,” Devin said. “It’s an introduction about who we are, what we’re about, and who we hope to be in the future.” 

Laura agreed with Devin—the mission is about, in her words, “amplifying voices.” 

“By buying coffee from us and connecting to Vigilant Hope, you should be hearing people’s stories that might disrupt your own life or how you understand the world,” she said. “It might help you better understand how you could be helpful. Or it might just change how you see the person on the corner, simply by buying coffee.”  

A THIRD SPACE

One thing that came up in all my conversations was the concept of a third space. Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined this term in 1989, who described the necessity of a social environment in society that is distinct from home (the first place) and work (the second place). Third spaces include cafés, bars, parks, libraries, gyms, community centers, and of course, churches. Coffee shops in Wilmington function as prominent third spaces, particularly as our city is rapidly losing our outdoor third spaces to development. 

The third spaces in other parts of the country aren’t quite the same. Taylor described a famous coffee shop in Manhattan that is completely white, from the cups to the coffee grinders to the barista uniforms. It’s a sterile, sleek image that evokes the clean fluorescent back of a restaurant kitchen. Last year when visiting New York, I went to several coffee shops in Brooklyn that had limited seating and a transient energy. You get your coffee to-go and head to the subway. 

In San Francisco, many of the coffee shops are seating-friendly, but often for remote work. Long tables host a sea of glowing screens and an abundance of chargers for longevity. Baristas are impersonal and highly efficient. There are even these coffee bars called Café X, little booths where your coffee is made by a fully autonomous robot.  

But in Wilmington, as in heaven: the coffee shops here reflect the culture of the city. It’s the South. You’re meant to sit down somewhere comfy, talk to a friend or neighbor, and eat a homemade scone made by a woman who’s had that family recipe for three generations. 

For Vigilant Hope, the value of our coffee shops as third spaces go beyond comfort. 

“This is a place where lots of different people come in,” Laura said of the cafe. “You might stand in line behind an elected official, and behind him might be someone who slept outside last night. Mixed in there might be a church pastor, a stay-at-home mom, or someone who came from yoga next door…we need to practice being near each other so we can know each other.”

DWELLING IN MOMENTS

Dwell House Coffee, the aforementioned coffee truck, is making the concept of a third space portable. Founders Mailee Banman and Anna Claire Morales are best friends with a shared love of community and faith. They had their first launch on August 16 at a private events venue in Ogden. 

Mailee and Anna Claire always dreamed of starting a business together. At first, their plan was to sell clothing—but when they realized they already had a coffee cart in their driveway, purchased years ago by Anna Claire’s husband, they found a different calling. 

 “I felt like the Lord was asking us to steward something he’d already given us—the coffee cart, which was just sitting there,” Anna Claire told me. 

Anna Claire is a Wilmington local and a lifelong coffee enthusiast—she started drinking coffee at age 5—while Mailee is from Canada and a tea aficionado. Their shared skillset made coffee an exciting venture. To gauge interest, they first hosted several pop-ups in Anna Claire’s living room. The events were a success, with people sitting on their couch drinking their coffee for hours and chatting. It was the sort of community they wanted to further with Dwell House. 

“It was a really sweet confirmation from the Lord. Obviously, we intended to sell clothes at the first one, but we were really affirmed by people wanting our coffee,” said Mailee. 

When I met with the duo at Social Coffee, they had just come from picking up the newly restored coffee truck. I asked them about their aesthetic choices for the truck, and they excitedly centered around a few words: neutral, simple, and warm. 

“We want to do events like weddings down the line, so we wanted something that’s going to be beautiful and clean, and look really nice at any event we’re at. It’s got natural wood countertops. We’re keeping it pretty neutral, but with some pops of color on our cups and other details,” said Mailee. 

“We don’t want our drinks to be over-the-top crazy with different flavors or a lot going on. That’s fun and yummy, but our goal is to bring it back to the simple warmth of a cup of coffee,” added Anna Claire.  

“We just want something good quality, something that will slow you down,” explained Mailee. “We want to talk to you more about how your day is and what’s going on in your life rather than what is in your coffee.” 

Anna Claire described the importance of a sense of connection and leisure in their business. Despite being a mobile cart, they aren’t interested in a quick or impersonal transaction.

“Coffee in a lot of cities is more of a means of ‘I need this to get through my day,’ or an exchange almost, something you grab very quickly,” she said. “I grew up with coffee being the very opposite…coffee is supposed to be a slow process. It takes time, especially with good coffee. Everything is measured and everything is timed, right down to your water quality. A lot of coffee shops put that to the backburner, and they’re like, ‘how can we turn this over and get somebody out?’ So I think a big part of what we’re wanting to do comes from the word ‘dwell.’ Just remaining, abiding in community with each other. Nothing that Dwell has to do with is ‘fast paced.’ It’s all about sitting and being present.” 

Anna Claire and Mailee envision a brick and mortar version of Dwell House one day, but for now, they’re excited at the portability of the community they’re building. 

“I feel like we’re learning that you can dwell in moments, and it doesn’t have to be a physical location,” Anna Claire said.  

“People are starving for community and for a minute,” added Mailee. “We’re trying to build that space. Not everyone who comes to the coffee shop are believers, but this is a way that we can serve people and meet them where they’re at…it’s a ministry when it comes down to it. We want to show people the love of Jesus through a really good cup of coffee.”

WHO WE ARE TO BECOME

I’d be remiss if I didn’t end on this note. When I was interviewing Laura and Devin, something happened. I don’t know what it was, or even how to properly articulate it. I wasn’t raised in the church, so I think I’m lacking the right vocabulary—the Holy Spirit, maybe? It happened when Devin was talking about the way faith informs her personal coffee brewing. 

“It feels similar to me of the imagery of the artist, or God as the creator,” she said. As she spoke, her blue eyes looked elsewhere, at some unseen thing. “It feels very parallel to the process of roasting. For me, it’s seeing and trying to honor the coffee to how it was intended to taste. I think that is a picture of what faith is: it’s about who you are created to be, and honoring and living that out for who we are to become.” 

There was something about witnessing the devout that sent a chill down my spine. When someone believes something—really believes it—you can feel its presence in the room, like a gelatinous cloud of something otherworldly or spiritual. I guess that’s what I felt. Or else it was the coffee, which was, as always, very good.