Cxffeeblack's Renata Henderson and Bartholomew Jones on Making Connections [118‪]‬ Boss Barista

I’m honored to have two guests on the show today—Bartholomew Jones and Renata Henderson of Cxffeeblack. To say that Cxffeeblack is a coffee roasting company is an understatement. Cxffeeblack is a brand, an educational platform, a music outlet, an informative podcast, connecting the ancestral history of coffee to the modern day. Renata and Bartholomew, who are married and raising two children in Memphis, Tennessee, didn’t just aim to start a business, but set off on a mission to impact social change.

“The cxffee plant was stolen from Africa in 1616 by two Dutch spies. Three years later the first stolen black bodies landed in Jamestown Virginia.” This is written on the back of each bag of Guji Mane, an Ethiopian coffee from the Sidamo region that Cxffeeblack sells on their website. In this episode, we talk a lot about intent and self-knowledge. Both Renata and Bartholomew tie both their own personal histories and the colonial history of coffee to the current state of the specialty coffee industry and challenge how we view and consume coffee. It's actually hard to summarize this episode because Renata and Batholomew touch upon so many big ideas, and what makes this episode special is the clear connection the two have built together.

For so many people, the memories of coffee they have growing up—as an occasion to gather with family and share stories—doesn’t match up with what the specialty coffee landscape actually looks like. This episode is about making connections. Both the tangible, like what does it mean when specialty coffee doesn’t reflect the experiences of its members—in particular Black people, who coffee was stolen from—and abstract connections, like how identity and life experience manifest in the art and creative endeavors we take on. Cxffeeblack is a creative enterprise, and much of that energy comes from the connection and freedom of expression Renata and Bartholomew have made.