Busby’s latte in competition at age 16.
Courtesy | Jackson Busby

Before he learned to drive, Jackson Busby learned to roast coffee. Now, at 19, he is the owner and operator of Hillsdale’s Ad Astra Coffee Roasters. 

Busby’s love for coffee began when he was 8. His family lived in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and he woke up with his dad to make coffee for him before work every day. This simple act of love for his father started what would become a great passion of his life. 

“My dad was working for a software company, so he was up three hours earlier than everyone else, and he was tired,” Busby said. “So I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna wake up early with my dad every single morning and make up a cup of coffee.’ For two years, I did just that.”

By the time he was 10, Busby’s entrepreneurial dreams were already budding. More than just making coffee, Busby decided he wanted to learn how to roast it. 

“I did all the research, and I found this little coffee roaster that was just a starter kit,” Busby said. “It was $200, and $200 was like $17 million to a kid — the end of the world. I end up going to my mom, like, ‘Hey,  I found this coffee roaster starter, but it’s really expensive. I don’t have $200, but if you pay for it, I will roast and sell coffee to people, and I will pay you back.’ I’m a 10-year-old homeschool kid whose parents tried to encourage entrepreneurship, and here I am making a business offer to my mom at 10, so she ends up buying it.”

With lots of research help from his father and an almost disastrous first roast, Busby began to make sippable coffee. Since he was only 10 years old, his market was limited to his local church community. His packaging was a simple ziplock bag with his brand, “Majax’s Magical Coffee,” later rebranded to “Buzzbeans Coffee.” 

When he was 13, Busby’s parents met Russell Volz, owner of Lake City Coffee Roasters in Coeur d’Alene. He roasted coffee in his backyard and shipped more than 200 pounds a week. He was looking for an assistant and took a chance on the passionate, young kid. 

“We worked one day a week, but orders came in throughout the week,” Busby said. “We roasted on Tuesday, and the entire day was just roasting coffee in his shed, listening to Billy Joel, usually. And then I was 15, he’s like, ‘Hey, I don’t even know why I show up anymore. You do all the work.’ So he stopped showing up. And I was head of operations for this massive coffee roaster, putting out tons of coffee.”

After working with Volz for three years, Busby realized he knew a lot about roasting coffee, but he couldn’t make a latte. With Volz’s help, Busby got a job at a new local coffee shop as a barista. Here, he learned all the tricks of pulling the best espresso shots and how to make beautiful latte art. He got so good that he was invited to enter competitions around the state and even a national competition in Seattle. 

Busby’s family decided to move to Hillsdale when he was 18 because his dad accepted the job as senior business analyst at the college, prompting his search to find any local coffee roasting opportunities. 

“We found out about the one coffee roastery company in the area, which was Ad Astra, and we decided to reach out to Patrick Whalen, the guy who owned it,” Busby said. “If I could get a job with him, that’d be great. That was an interesting video call, because he kind of ended it by saying, ‘This is a very timely call, because I’m looking to sell the business to someone.’ After that, we worked on all the paperwork. In September, I actually finished the papers.”

Ad Astra currently has four locally crafted roasts. 

“I have the Hillsdale blend, which is, of course, the staple, and that is a single-origin Guatemala roasted in a medium roast, but mixed with a single-origin Brazil roasted as a dark roast,” Busby said. “And then there’s the Whitney, which is my personal favorite. It’s a single-origin Brazilian roast, which is what I worked on for years. I have the Hawk, which is a light roast Ethiopian. And then I have the Disastra, which is a dark-roasted Brazil.”

According to Busby, a five-pound roast takes 15 minutes. If the order is whole bean, he ships it to the customer on the same day, so it arrives on peak drinking day — the third day post-roast.

Busby serves pastries and coffee from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday morning at St. Joe’s Café in downtown Hillsdale.

“I love to try new coffee shops on Saturday mornings, and I love St. Joe’s and the cafe environment it offers,” senior Gianna Dugan said. “To sit down with good coffee and a pastry reminds me that life is good. I also really like to support local and family-owned businesses with missions that are community-driven. Ad Astra checks all those boxes while offering high-quality coffee. The coffee is flavorful and sweet, rather than bitter, which low-quality roasts can easily taste like.”

Currently, Busby’s goals are to spread the Ad Astra company name and reach. 

“I’d love to supply coffee to all these places, like local diners and any place that sells coffee,” Busby said. “I’d love to be their coffee roaster. The goal is to be able to grow it to a point where I can make a living off of it.”

Junior Gavin Todd, a roaster with Busby at Ad Astra, said he has been working for the company since 2024 but has made coffee since 2022. Todd said Busby’s youthful passion for his job paired with his skills of someone much older creates a great working environment. 

“It’s very rare for a town the size of Hillsdale to have its own coffee roaster, and I’d like to think we add a lot to the uniqueness of Hillsdale with something as simple as coffee,” Todd said. “Our slogan is ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ which means ‘to the stars through adversity.’ We believe we help people push through adversity to reach greatness through something as small as a good cup of coffee in the morning.”

With his upcoming wedding on March 7, Busby plans to bring his future wife, Elizabeth, to Hillsdale so they can continue growing Ad Astra and integrating into the community. 

“As to why I’m here, it ultimately comes down to the fact that I love the mission of Hillsdale College, and the fact that my parents met and graduated from here,” Busby said. “I think the family line connection is really cool. The fact that it can be a part of an awesome Christian community, and the fact that we feel like we are actually able to help people, and we really do stuff around the community, and to provide opportunities for other people — employ people — I think is ridiculously cool.”