At Bigbee Coffee Roasters in the small South Alabama town of Jackson, in Clarke County, they like to say their coffee is “worth going to jail for.”
And they mean that.
The coffee shop and café, as well as Bigbee’s roasting operations, are in the former Jackson city jail, where in 1971, Southern rockers the Allman Brothers Band were famously detained on numerous marijuana and heroin possession charges after they were arrested while traveling through town on their way to a concert at the University of Montevallo.
The old jail cells are still as they were, including cell No. 3, where roadie Joseph “Red Dog” Campbell carved his name along with the words “Allman Bros Band” into the concrete block wall.
Their black-and-white booking photographs -- including those of brothers Gregg and Duane Allman -- are also displayed in the cell.
Preston Quillen, who started Bigbee Coffee Roasters six years ago with the help of his father, Jesse Quillen, says hardly a day goes by that a fan of the band doesn’t stop by the jailhouse-turned-coffeehouse to see where the Brothers were locked up.
“I had a guy in from Maryland this morning who went to the beach,” Quillen says. “He found us and made the drive up just to see us and see the Allman Brothers cell.
“We’ve had people from all over,” he adds. “California, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, northern Georgia. So, yeah, people from all over.”
While they may drop by out of curiosity, Quillen says, they stay for the coffee and conversation, and they usually leave with a bag of Bigbee coffee to take with them.
Saved from demolition
If not for the Bigbee Coffee Roasters sign out front, the nondescript red brick building with the white columns could otherwise pass for a law office or a library.
After the jail closed, the building sat vacant for a decade or so and was on the verge of being torn down, Quillen says, until he and his father approached the city about leasing it to start Bigbee Coffee Roasters, which they named for the nearby Tombigbee River.
“I had this crazy idea about starting a coffee shop,” he says. “The city was very generous and gave us a good deal on the building.”
At the time, his father worked as an economic developer for Clarke County and didn’t want to see the building, and all its colorful history, demolished.
“I love the history there,” Jesse Quillen says. “The Allman Brothers is, of course, the headliner when it comes to the history there, but given that it was a police station, there’s a lot of stories there.”
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The mysterious bullet hole in one of the glass doors leading into the coffee shop is part of that lore, too.
“It looks like about a .38-caliber pistol shot -- something that somebody wasn’t happy about,” Jesse Quillen says. “So they just drove by and shot into the building one night.”
Rather than repair it, the Quillens just left it as a conversation starter.
“I’m kind of weird when it comes to that kind of stuff,” Jesse Quillen says. “That’s character, right? It’s leaking hot air or cold air -- whichever -- but it’s also character.
“A coffee shop is all about community and having fun and interacting with people,” he adds, “and you can stir up some real conversations about that kind of stuff.”
Inspired by a mission trip
A summer mission trip to Haiti with First Baptist Church Andalusia piqued Preston Quillen’s interest in learning to roast coffee.
“We got to see how it grows, how it’s harvested, see how they roasted it there -- which is over an open flame,” he remembers. “I came home with a vision to partner with people like that and help them and buy coffee beans from families like that.”
He and his dad took a commercial coffee roasting class in Minnesota before starting the business, and Preston came home more convinced than ever that that’s what he wanted to do.
“From that (class), we were like, ‘I think we can do this; I think we can make it work,’” he recalls. “It was just a crazy pipe dream.”
Jesse Quillen -- who had previously owned a family insurance business in Bruce, Miss., before making a career change that eventually led him to Jackson -- left his job with the Clarke County economic development office to help his son get started.
“I was real happy doing what I was doing,” he remembers. “Nevertheless, (Preston) wanted to do this, and I said, OK, ‘I’ll just take a year off and do this for you and then go back to doing economic development work somewhere.’”
Preston was living in Tuscaloosa and working as a cardiac sonographer at DCH Regional Medical Center when they launched the business, so his father ran the day-to-day operations until he could move to Jackson.
“He was the one roasting till 10, 11, 12 o’clock at night and then getting up at 5 a.m. making pastries and muffins and doing that seven days a week,” Preston says. “It’s very humbling to know that he would do that for me. I owe him pretty much everything.”
One year turned into nearly three, with the COVID-19 pandemic putting Jesse Quillen’s plans to return to his regular line of work on pause. He has since moved to Enterprise, where he is the executive director of the Wiregrass Economic Development Corporation.
“The (coffee) business was always intended to be his,” Jesse Quillen says of his son. “It was his idea. Preston was the guru of roasting coffee. He taught me everything I know – not the other way around.
“It was his passion, his dream, and I did this for him simply because he was my son and I wanted to help him.”
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Bigbee Coffee Roasters imports most of its coffee beans from growers in Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ethiopia, Preston Quillen says, and ships its roasted coffee to customers all over the country -- from Hawaii to Texas, California to North Dakota.
In addition to online and in-store sales, the coffee is available at Bee on the Brow Bed & Breakfast in Mentone and at The Pecan on Broad and Black Belt Treasures in Camden, Quillen says. The Piggly Wiggly in his hometown of Bruce, Miss., also sells it.
“We’re a small roaster,” he says. “It’s literally just me and one employee. That (roasting) side of our business is a lot of work that our regular customers just don’t see.”
A big day for the Quillen family
Earlier this spring, the Clarke County Historical Society unveiled a historical marker in front of the old jail commemorating that infamous day the Allman Brothers Band got locked up there.
“They reached out to us and said, ‘We want to put a historical marker here outside this building since you guys have kept it up and done a lot of renovations to it,’” Preston Quillen says.
“They approached us about having this big event, and it was amazing,” he adds. “I would say we had probably 200 people show up that day. You know, for a small town, that’s a lot of people.”
It was a big day not just for Jackson but also for the Quillen family -- who posed for a family portrait alongside the marker -- and especially for Preston and his dad, who gave up his job to help his son realize his dream.
“I am very blessed that he would do that for me,” Preston says. “He did it in hopes that I would keep it going and build it into something super nice for the community.
“And here we are,” he adds, “six years later.”
Bigbee Coffee Roasters is at 118 College Ave. in Jackson, Ala. The phone is 251-262-1231. Hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. the first Saturday of each month. For more information, go here.
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