Three Entrepreneurs Say ‘Coffee Is My Thing’ And Hope It Becomes Yours

While coffee giant Starbucks rolls out its pumpkin spice latte, a perennial fall favorite for coffee drinkers, some African American owners of coffeehouses and blends are also prepping for the new season.

“We are going to launch the blends … starting with the Casalena blend named after my mother,” said Stephanie Thomas who owns Café Bella in Atlanta.

After the pandemic forced Thomas to move from her brick-and-mortar coffee shop, she pivoted and focused on a new iteration of her entrepreneurial dream.

“I still have my business, but I decided to get with my roasterie and present my brand,” she explained. “Seed to cup, I can create my own blends and sell my own brands of coffee.”

The online business launches in early September.

“I worked hard to develop this brand of Café Bella,” Thomas said, “so the desire and the dream – the fire in my belly did not go away. I had to say, ‘What other way God?’”

A coffee drinker since she was a five-year-old, Thomas attended school in Portland, Oregon, to become a master barista and has even lived in Nicaragua where she was taught the nuances by coffee farmers.

She offers this reminder, “Your dreams don’t end because an adversity happens in your life … you don’t ever stop. As an entrepreneur you have to keep going.”

Head West

T.J. Roberts understands. A month before he celebrated his five-year anniversary at the insurance company where he had worked and was a month from being vested, he says things changed. But it didn’t stop him from moving forward with plans to open Kinship Café, a coffeehouse in Kansas City, Kansas.

“I’m here every day,” he said. “I haven’t had a vacation in six years.”

Roberts took a second job at a roastery to learn coffee and recently hosted a soft open for Kinship. It is an idea he nurtured for years.

“I started making coffee at my dad’s church when I was 10 years old,” he recalled.

He’s working with a group of other entrepreneurs to spread the coffee love in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Charion Thompson is one of the founders of Black Coffee Collective, which is affiliated with Porter House KC a non-profit that helps entrepreneurs sustain their businesses by providing resources that include mentoring and classes.

Thompson also has a deep affinity for coffee but knows his limits after trying his hand at roasting beans.

“This was more of a hobby at first,” he admits. “When I was roasting, I said, ‘This smells like burned popcorn.’”

He decided to outsource that aspect of the business and reached out to Messenger Coffee which sources beans from Brazil and Columbia.

According to Thompson, “we sell a lot of coffee.”

But that’s not all he, Sanders and Stephanie Thomas in Atlanta want to do. All three have expressed a desire to involve other Black Americans in their embrace of this beverage enjoyed all over the world.

“We want to bring that teaching aspect to our community,” he states. “In Africa little kids drink coffee from the time they come out of the womb.”

To share – not just a cup of coffee – but an experience and education is part of the goal for the members of this coffee club.