Coffee devotees and other caffeine lovers should keep their eyes peeled in the coming months for Black Coffee Northwest, a local business recently contracted to sprout a new branch on campus. SCC President Jack Kahn described this initiative as “step one” of a larger plan to reunite students with hot coffee and food.
In the PUB building, there used to be a “cafeteria [that] actually went away prior to COVID because they were losing money,” said Kahn. As pandemic-associated restrictions have lifted and enabled students to take more classes in person, discontent regarding the lack of accessible refreshments has grown. Kahn reported that “coffee and food are always in the top five” when students are polled for changes they’d like to see the college make.
After the completion of a Request For Proposal, in which a committee of staff and students from the Associated Student Government set criteria for interested organizations to meet — including affordable prices and devotion to the community — Black Coffee Northwest was selected as the highest-scoring candidate. Their new branch may open as soon as fall 2024 in the PUB building, where college administrators also aspire to eventually reinstate the cafeteria.
The arrival of coffee (and more) on campus is not merely an attempt to sate perpetually hungry and thrifty college students; it is also an expansion of the college’s “equity-based strategic plan.” Black Coffee Northwest is a Black-owned business that concentrates supportive efforts like job training, mental health services, and extracurricular enrichment on African American youth and King County at large. Their presence at SCC will put dependably low-cost food and drink and another source of local aid within arms’ reach. Kahn also noted that the opening of this shop will likely offer a few more job opportunities to students interested in working at the college.
Black Coffee Northwest’s first branch on a college campus opened in January of this year at North Seattle College, where they’ve aesthetically and aromatically attracted North Seattle students and visitors like SCC student (and Ebbtide co-editor) Johanna Wilder. Wilder commented, “I rate their 8oz drip coffee with cream… Exceptional.”
