A Somali man in a prayer cap strolls by the coffee kiosk and waves at the young barista in the hoodie. “Latte,” he cries out. The young man behind the counter nods and starts making the drink. As the customer pays, the two chat briefly in Somali. “I’ve seen him around before. But that’s the first time I actually spoke to him,” says Burhan Mohumed, the 20-year-old barista. “I now know him to a point so if I see him outside, I’ll be able to talk to him.” And so the age-old East African social lubricant of coffee is beginning to show its power in a new way.
A small coffee cart with big ambitions at the Brian Coyle Community Center in Minneapolis is serving up coffee and tea, both Somali and Starbucks style, to stimulate job training for young people and a much-needed connection to their elders. “By running the coffee shop, they hope more adults will have conversations with them,” said Jennifer Blevins, the center’s director. “They can see the men hanging out at other coffee shops and they thought, ‘Maybe this will be a draw.’” Their role model sits just a few blocks away, the Starbucks cafe on Riverside Avenue, where scores of Somali men routinely gather to sip tea and coffee, smoke and loudly debate current events.
Unlike the Starbucks, however, the new Coyle Community Cafe, or “Triple C,” is run by neighborhood youth. For many, it’s their first job. They mix coffee drinks, run the cash register and take orders from behind the coffee kiosk. The Coyle center, in the heart of Minneapolis’ pulsing Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, is a magnet for young and adult immigrants — particularly East Africans — who attend classes, go to meetings, or shoot hoops in the gym. In a few weeks, the younger generation will hold a grand opening for the cafe, an event they hope will lead to conversations and mentoring relationships between kids and the elders in the community.
The youth-run coffee shop is a vision three years in the making. Members of the Cedar Riverside Youth Council dreamed up the idea.
Community leaders backed it, helping the kids create a business plan and secure a $15,000 grant from the local Sundance Foundation and additional money from the Minnesota Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“Our plan is to start to build relationships with other employers, especially coffee shops, so after the youth have been in this position for four to six months, they can move on and take their skills somewhere else,” Blevins said.
As part of the grand vision for the cafe, leaders plan to move the coffee kiosk from the front lobby to a large room nearby, adding tables and chairs and creating a true coffeehouse. That vision is tied to a proposed $6.5 million renovation and expansion of the Coyle Center.
For now, the cart remains parked in the front lobby and offers mango smoothies and authentic Somali tea — a spiced blend of tea, milk and sugar — along with the more typical coffee shop fare such as muffins, hot cocoa, and coffee.
Sambusas, a traditional Somali pastry filled with meat, should be on the menu soon.
Only time will tell if the cafe succeeds in bringing the generations together.
Blevins says there is talk of having the cafe host events designed to do just that. One idea is to have an evening of storytelling by elders. Another is a ladies night out event.
So far, about 10 young people between 16 and 20 are working at the fledgling cafe.
Burhan Mohumed is one of them.
He grew up across the street in the Riverside Plaza apartment building, a low-income, high-rise housing complex that many in the neighborhood call “The Towers.”
Before landing the barista job, he was working at the Coyle center as a gym attendant.
This job pays more, he said, which tells him his employment history is moving in the right direction.
“I’m learning a trade,” he said, pumping Ethiopian coffee from a thermos into a to-go cup for a Somali woman waiting at the cash register.
Carefully, he poured enough milk to turn the coffee from black to a toffee color before handing it to her.
She tipped him handsomely, and he smiled.
As Mohumed talks about his hopes for the coffeehouse, his eyes take on a faraway look.
“It should really take off,” he said. “We’ll probably have long lines. And it will spark conversations,” he went on, imagining the possibilities. “They’ll say, ‘You come here, too?’”
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Star Tribune
