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Community Business Connector has served Darnesha Weary, who owns Black Coffee Northwest, but it is really Darnesha and her business and nonprofit organization that serve us all.
Weary was born and raised in the Seattle area and started a coffee shop in 2020 to support her nonprofit called Grounded, established in 2000.
There is a local presence and a global presence. The coffee supplier is Marcelline Budza of Rebuild Women’s Hope, a coffee-growing organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Weary said the supplier uses coffee beans to provide jobs for women in the village, and to build homes and a school for girls.
“That work in the community is really the heart of who we are as a company,” Weary said. “We’re doing good with every single cup of coffee that we serve.”
Weary explains how her team stayed true to this mission despite the global pandemic and social unrest brought about by the killing of George Floyd.
“2020 didn’t activate us or reignite us – we were full steam ahead,” Weary said. “People were now paying attention [to Black-owned businesses]. We were able to use our coffee shop as a platform for conversation.”
Weary and her team renamed coffee drinks to honor these conversations and added anti-racist actions to take on every cup.
Black Coffee Northwest has locations at North Seattle College, at 23rd and Jackson in the Central District opening in February and at Shoreline Community College set to open at the end of November.
The company has eight employees – all diverse and under the age of 26.
Black Coffee NW was just selected to receive a $100,000 Racism as a Public Health Crisis Grant from King County.
Weary has applied the grant to the new flagship Central District location to help with costs to open the space. She has added new equipment, expanded the barista training program and added new furnishings.
And she bubbles with enthusiasm when she talks about the brand-new, ready-to-go equipment for her staff.
“They deserve it,” Weary said.
The staff members have experienced when the oven goes out and they can’t bake pastries for customers. They all went shopping for the new equipment together.
“We have been good stewards of our grant money for 20 years,” Weary said. “We can show proof as a small nonprofit, to be able to play ball with the big leagues and to be selected at that level, we were very excited.”
Grant money also supports her nonprofit Grounded, which provides wraparound services for at-risk youth, helping with housing insecurity and supporting mental health. It offers free mental health sessions, job training, internships and career exploration. A girls mentorship program, called Grounded Girls, connects young girls with professional women in the area.
Grounded has three employees, all young Black women ages 25 and younger, Weary said.
“It’s a blessing for me to show my team they can do this work and they are capable,” she said. “We’re doing it as a small company, without putting profit over people.”
Weary wants the consumer to be aware of the importance of having Black businesses in our community, and seeking them out and patronizing them.
“We are underfunded and we don’t receive capital,” Weary said. “We have never received a loan and we’re not alone in that. Only 3% goes to Black-owned nonprofits in Seattle. We exist and you have to be intentional about paying attention to us. It’s systemically very hard to survive. We do a lot of business coaching and mentorship. You have to be bigger, louder and stronger or you will not survive.”
Weary is passionate that the neighborhood coffee shop is also doing big work to change the trajectory of the community.
“We do it on small dollars, on a small budget and we’re scraping by sometimes,” Weary said. “But we ask: What are you doing to make sure your community is safe, seen and taken care of? Especially our youth. They need us. I’m doing all of this work now for a better tomorrow.”
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