Origin Story and the Continuing Legacy of Young Buck Coffee

2016

Young Buck Coffee was founded in Jacksonville, Florida in 2016. 

Ryan, a BFA graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, lived in Kansas City for 10 years working as a studio artist and carpenter. It was there he discovered a community of small batch artisan coffee roasters. As a hobby, he started home-roasting coffee and used restored vintage espresso machines to barista for his friends. When he returned to Florida, his family invested in a coffee roaster and Young Buck Coffee was born.

Named after his grandfather, known by family as Buck, Ryan used Buck’s WWII military photo as their first logo, hence “Young Buck” Coffee was born. 

2017-2019

Ryan’s brand was built on fresh, responsibly sourced and sustainably grown specialty coffees that are locally roasted-to-order in small batches and sent to you that day, roaster-to-door. As he developed Young Buck’s product line, he needed a more dynamic brand muse to guide his decisioning. He drew from his art student roots and named his blends after works that inspired him, such as Composition IV (Kandinsky) and Figure 8 (Johns).

Using this brand and an early product line, Ryan brought his coffee to local markets around Jacksonville to let people taste and subscribe. He built a business of passionate customers. 

2020

As Ryan’s business grew, so did his family. More children meant less time to spend roasting and working at markets. In 2020, he hired Stephen Ezell to roast Young Buck Coffee. Stephen is an experienced roaster who taught roasting and farming courses for Boot Coffee in Marin CA, the leading specialty coffee institute in the US. Stephen helped Ryan improve the products and develop their flavor profiles. 

Soon Ryan and his wife were expecting another child and decided he needed to return to the workforce and sell Young Buck Coffee. Caring deeply about the product and his customers, he wanted a buyer that would continue to serve his customers.

2021

In 2021 I purchased Young Buck Coffee. 

At the time, Stephen and I owned another local coffee company, Sequential Coffee. I was interested in learning about what Ryan had done to build Young Buck and how I could leverage that to build Sequential’s community.

What I learned from working the markets with him, is that Ryan was great at talking with, and listening to his customers. He learned from them how they thought about choosing, buying, making, and drinking coffee. That resonated with my background as a writer and designer.  

2022-2023

Stephen and I worked on developing the flavors of the Young Buck product line, focusing on caramelization and deepening the flavor dynamics of the coffees until the new flavors were perfect. Young Buck focused on medium roast coffees and Sequential focused on light roasted coffee. 

2024

By building relationships, both with the customers directly and between our customers and our products, we’ve managed to build Young Buck into a great coffee brand through great coffee products. Sequential Coffee did not build those relationships and won’t make it to 2025.

While we spent this year listening to customers and improving the products, green coffee prices rose more than 40%, due to climate change limiting production, global conflict affecting coffee imports from Africa, and general global inflation. After maintaining the lowest priced specialty coffees in town, we’re finally adjusting Young Buck prices. We’re also rebranding our products to return to Young Buck’s original “art and coffee” theme.