Page 105 - Southern Oregon Magazine Fall 2021

GOODBEAN

COFFEE

The proof is in the cup

lynn leissler

david gibb

ehind every good cup of coffee are good beans and
first-rate processing. GoodBean Coffee in Jacksonville
and Medford (winner of Southern Oregon Magazine
BReaders Choice 2021 award, “best place for a cup of
coffee”) has achieved the perfect combination of both.

Behind every business is a story. Thirty-plus years ago, Michael
Kell had it all—single, successful in business, and living the
good life in Southern California. But he was miserable. He
wanted something more, though unsure what that something
might be. He kept daydreaming, What would it be like if… He
had no answers until he completed the sentence. …if I broke
orbit. And so he did. He sold his insurance business, considered
a move to rural America, and planned to enter the Peace Corps.
By then he was with Mary, now his wife, and he persuaded her
to “run away with me.” They headed to a mountain in Colorado,
and for six months they skied and enjoyed the region’s beauty.
But that was still not “it.”

Mary agreed to join him on an odyssey fueled by wanderlust.
As they searched for their future, they determined to stay with
their known western culture and out of California. That left the
Pacific Northwest, where they traveled for over two months.
Michael kept thinking about coffee, which was odd, because he
didn’t drink it. He wanted to work with his hands, and contem-
plated what it was that gave him pleasure.

In Yachats, he discovered the connection. At UCLA he had spent
many hours in a campus coffee shop drinking hot chocolate, and
he wanted to recreate what he’d liked so much—the atmos-
phere, the camaraderie, the people watching. An innkeeper in
that central coastal town discerned his struggles and recom-
mended they go to Ashland, which they did. Mary worked at her
trade as an esthetician, and Michael self-apprenticed at a nearby
coffee shop, complete with graphs and flow charts he created.

Through amazing and providential circumstances, a friend set
him up in the building that still houses GoodBean Coffee today,
which along with the Oddfellows Hall, is one of the original

fall 2021 | www.southernoregonmagazine.com 103