A Coffee Shop Where Blackness Flourishes
A unique partnership spurs equitable economic development and welcoming in Memphis
In Memphis, a collaboration between a local coffee shop owner and a non-profit leader is creating a new model for neighborhood retail and equitable community development. It’s the story of two men whose unique partnership is creating profound community impacts — and an innovative business model whose global reach is creating jobs, joy and a place of welcoming and gathering for folks back home.
It’s happening in the Heights, a racially diverse, historic district not far east of downtown. The neighborhood developed along a streetcar line on National Street which was decommissioned in the 1930s. Through the years, racist policies such as redlining led to economic hardship in the community. Today, it is home to a diverse mix of working-class people but also shows signs of disinvestment, including over 1,100 vacant and abandoned properties.
The coffee shop is The Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Club, a high-end coffee shop unlike others. It’s the brainchild of Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson, a Black couple with roots in Memphis and a commitment to running their business in a way that celebrates Blackness and invests in their local community.
Jones and Henderson teamed up with the Heights CDC, a non-profit focused on housing stability and community development, to kickstart and grow their brick-and-mortar business. This partnership between Jones and Jared Myers, executive director of the CDC, has grown into a close collaboration in which both men describe each other as “co-conspirators.”
Myers, who is white and not originally from the Heights, comes from a different cultural background than Jones, and the organization he runs owns the building Jones’s business operates out of. In many cases, arrangements like this, even when they’re well-intended, can end up being paternalistic, with, in Jones’s words, “the Black or brown or Indigenous business taking all the heat if they fail, but the white partner taking all the reward if they succeed.”
But in this partnership, Jones said there’s space to experiment and grow, celebrate Black culture and people and, if things don’t work out, to fail with the same level of buy-in and support with which he got started.
“There has to be room, particularly for the Black and brown businesses, to fail and recover… but often failure is weaponized,” Jones said. “With the Heights CDC, they hold the risks and shoulder the reward with the same amount of buy-in and exposure that we do.”
A coffee shop “for us first”
Jones and Henderson started Cxffee Black, the coffee company that preceded the coffee shop and remains their coffee brand, as an e-commerce venture in 2018, roasting single-origin beans using methods inspired by traditional Ethiopian methods. The couple started the business to share their love for coffee in ways that honor and reflect African traditions and people, and that bring some of those traditions to their Black community in Memphis.
Myers and Jones are neighbors, and Myers admired Jones’s leadership and the values behind his business. As Cxffee Black’s business grew, Myers encouraged Jones to start a shop in the neighborhood. “They’re leaders here, and they bought into the community and put a stake in the ground,” Myers said. “And I did bug him about starting the shop, but I saw the value of it.”
The Heights CDC owns a mixed-use space in the neighborhood on National Street, a main thoroughfare. Myers offered Jones a flexible-rent space there.
Jones was concerned about the values and vibes that he sees in many high-end coffee shops. With expensive drinks and a quiet atmosphere, these coffee shops can send strong cultural cues of who is and is not welcome.
“When Black people gather, it’s loud, and there’s laughter,” Jones said. “In most coffee shops, it’s like a library. That’s counterintuitive to my community.”
When he and Henderson eventually opened their shop, they did so with a strong commitment to welcoming and contributing positively to the Heights.
Since opening full time earlier this year, The Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Club has become a mainstay of community activism and conversation, and a space for celebrating Blackness. They host weekly cyphers, where people gather to play beats, rap and make music together. On these days, music-making customers overflow onto the street. Art and political discussion are encouraged. As is loitering, a cultural norm in Black communities that, Jones pointed out, is often villainized in non-Black spaces.
“We built the shop for us first,” Jones said.
Civic-mindedness and community are at the core of financial decisions, too. Most employees are from within the local community, and neighbors can receive coffee at a reduced cost or for free, depending on what they can pay.
At the same time, online sales and the monthly coffee club have continued, and the shop attracts customers from outside the neighborhood, across the country and even internationally. Celebrities have stopped by, including famous rappers, and the only Black US barista champion was a guest one day. Being known outside of Memphis — and continuing to emphasize online sales and a vibrant social media presence — Jones and Henderson can invest back in the community.
“We can be super intentional and even sacrificial locally because there are so many people outside of Memphis who know us and support us,” Jones said.
Sharing the work — and the risks
Jones and Henderson have seen successes, but they’ve seen challenges, too. Jones spoke openly of the difficulties of running a business, and of running this business in his specific neighborhood.
He and his staff experience the same hurdles as anyone living and working in the Heights. Public transportation can be unreliable, making it hard for employees who don’t own cars to get to work. And with fast-moving cars and poor walking infrastructure, it can be unsafe for employees and customers to walk to the shop. The Cxffee Club has been broken into multiple times, putting a strain on finances and causing stress for Jones, Henderson and Myers.
Both Jones and Myers said their partnership has been essential through the ups and downs — a source of strength and something to inspire other business owners and non-profit leaders working together.
The flexible rent provided by the mixed-use space helps keep the Cxffee Club and other local businesses financially stable, while supporting the neighborhood’s economy. Myers said the tenants pay a mix of rent rates, from market-rate to subsidized rates. The goal is to support a range of businesses with different needs that are all based in the neighborhood and that all create local jobs and economic value.
Both men spoke of the other’s ability to have uncomfortable conversations about everything from the volume and style of music being played to when to call or not call the police. They’ve worked out boundaries between work and family life, challenges with staff and the nuances of what it means to respect each other.
“Being uncomfortable is important for people in community development,” Myers said. “When people don’t have that mindset, that’s where I’ve seen toxicity.”
Myers is also supporting Jones and Henderson’s efforts to move the Anti-Gentrification Cxffee Club into a new building across the street — a building Jones and Henderson intend to own. Through a capital campaign and other fundraising efforts, that work is underway.
A synergy between small business and public space
Both the current location of the Cxffee Club and its future home are adjacent to the Heights Line, a nearly two-mile path and linear park currently under construction. Once completed, the Heights Line will connect 23,000 people to a beautiful public space in their neighborhood.
Like so much about the Cxffee Club and the Heights CDC, the location near this new public space is intentional.
When the Heights Line opens, the new foot traffic will provide additional business for the Cxffee Club and other nearby enterprises, creating local economic value. And Jones is already thinking about how to make sure the spirit of welcoming he’s nurtured at the coffee shop can flow out into the public space, making it clear to neighbors that this beautiful new place is for them.
“The feeling we get is, that stuff ain’t for us. There’s more money in the neighborhood, but the money coming in is not for us,” Jones said. “Our role in this is making sure the story from the jump is: This is for you.”
He envisions cyphers that flow out into the greenway, public barbecues like a recent Juneteenth celebration that bring people together to share food and good times, musicians and artists gathering for music and conversation — a range of ways to activate the space, celebrate Blackness and share coffee and community.
Recently, Jones was invited to serve coffee at an event inaugurating A Monument to Listening at Tom Lee Park, a recently reimagined park in Memphis. He said he served a similar role there, helping Black people know they were welcome.
“When the DJ was playing the music, you could see people walking by stop and kind of scrunch their face and look up and be like, ‘Wait, we can do that here?’” Jones said. “It’s something that tells people in our community that this is for you, too.
“We’ve left room for Blackness to flourish and to be beautiful and to be appreciated and to be seen again.”
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
