Field Reports: Indaba Coffee
by Carrie Herrman, Office of Sustainability
A couple months ago someone described Spokane to me in the most intriguing way. They said, “Spokane is a daydream dressed as a nightmare”. This sentiment has reverberated through almost every experience I’ve had with this hidden treasure of a place I call home. When you look past the crusty first impressions Spokane so often gives, you find that, underneath it all, there is a very alive pulse — a permeating sense of community held together by people and local businesses that put their heart and soul into making Spokane a better place. One of the most heartening examples of this can be found at Indaba, in everything from the coffee they serve to the social justice and outreach they embody.
The owner and founder of Indaba, Bobby Enslow, has worked tirelessly to make his coffee shop the success it is today. From the very beginning Indaba started with “an initial social heart and social mission,” Enslow said. It’s location in the West Central area was intentional, as it was both the neighborhood that Enslow grew up around as a Spokane native, and at the time when Indaba was started (2009), it was also one of the poorest neighborhood in the state. The very building Indaba resides in at 1425 W Broadway is a fixed income housing development. Driven by the visible need in his community Enslow grew a business he felt could serve it on several levels.
When Enslow began asking people around West Central where the greatest need lay the answer he kept getting was simply “food.” To combat the consistent need for food in the neighborhood, Enslow installed a one-for-one meal program partnered with Second Harvest, so that for every bag of coffee sold a meal for someone in need would be provided.
Outside of this partnership Indaba has also teamed up with Project Hope and the Union Gospel Mission for a project-in-the-works to make even more positive change in the community. The relationship Enslow holds with other organizations in the Spokane community only further emphasize the work that he set out to accomplish in the first place. For Enslow, even before he decided on a coffee shop and decided on Indaba, he was more focused on “creating meaning and not product,”
The theme of social justice takes an even more nuanced role at Indaba through internships and employment programs for members within the at-risk youth demographic in Spokane. Through these programs, some of the kids in the community have the unique opportunity to shadow baristas from Indaba and learn valuable skills that will add an edge to any resume, proving that these kids are smart, hard-working and dependable. This is the portion of his business that really speaks to Enslow’s heart and he confessed that “the thing that really gets [him] is seeing people’s lives change,” Spokane is made better for having a business like Indaba helping to build up the under privileged population.
Indaba also has it’s eye towards the global community. I know I would drink a bad cup of coffee for a good cause, but at Indaba, I don’t have to. They source their products from sustainable companies and farms and through direct trade form quality relationships with their coffee growers and insure they are paid fair wages. Enslow said for him quality and sustainability oriented coffee sourcing “is kind of a given,” Essentially, Indaba is just a really good neighbor producing some really tasty libations.
Indaba’s business model must have really struck a cord within Spokane as they’ve been successful enough to open up a second location downtown. Enslow wishes to see more of downtown revitalized by small community-conscious businesses like his own, asserting that “Not taking care of your Downtown in a city is like not taking care of your heart”. It’s people like Enslow and businesses like Indaba, truly committed to Spokane, that make this town so worth exploring and loving. They prove to the people and the world just what a daydream Spokane can be.