An award-winning hip-hop artist, a family-owned grocery group and a retiree are just three members of the Memphis community coming together to support Cxffeeblack.

“This is what the people who discovered coffee meant for it to do, to bring people together,” said Bartholomew Jones who founded the coffee company with his wife Renata Henderson in 2019. “And there is no better place than Memphis to plant the seed of that fruit and watch it grow.”

Last year, Cxffeeblack announced it would open a stand-alone brick-and-mortar cafe and coffee roaster in Mitchell Heights, a predominantly Black neighborhood north of Summer Avenue in Memphis near its current location.

Black Restaurant Week returns with 11 new restaurants

The larger space will allow the company to increase its roasting capacity as well as have a community space to continue Cxffeeblack’s mission of educating and empowering people through coffee.

“It is a new way of doing coffee. We are honoring our roots,” Jones said. “We have spent the past few years traveling the world to learn about the indigenous history of coffee in Africa with the goal of creating the first all-Black supply chain.”

A Wefunder campaign entitled “Honor Your Roots” was launched in 2024 to raise funds for the new coffee roaster and efforts to transform the Anti-Gentrification Coffee Club concept.

With the new coffee roaster set to open in June, Cxffeeblack has raised more than $450,000 from 527 investors.

“Coffee brings people to the table. It’s communal,” Jones said.

Stronger together

Last week, Cxffeeblack announced a new partnership with Castle Retail Group, the Memphis-based family-owned company behind Cash Saver, High Point Grocery and South Point Grocery.

As part of this partnership, Cxffeeblack products are now available at South Point and will soon be available at High Point and Cash Saver locations too. Cxffeeblack will also serve as the wholesale coffee provider for the in-house coffee shop at Castle Retail Group’s upcoming Southaven grocery store location in Silo Square.

For both parties, the collaboration represents more than business; it’s a convergence of two families from different communities in Memphis, both shaped by the land and both committed to investing in the future.

Rick James, the owner of Castle Retail Group, said at the heart of the collaboration is a deep respect for history and a shared belief in the power of hard work. 

“My grandfather and grandmother worked the land. They farmed in Arkansas, lived in a one-room shack with a dirt floor and paid the people who worked alongside them in Booker T. Washington half-dollar coins as a sign of respect,” Rick James said. “They knew that the people in the fields with them were equals even when the world didn’t see it that way.”

Those same coins, which were minted between 1946 and 1951 to honor the Black leader, have now reappeared in a new context as James and his family join forces with Jones and Cxffeeblack.

“We’re doing what we can with what we have, just like our ancestors did,” Jones said. “My grandmother picked 600 pounds of cotton a day in Alabama. My great-grandfather found ways to own his labor in Arkansas. And now we’re reclaiming coffee, not just as a product but as a legacy.”

Taylor James, the vice president of Castle Retail Group, said this new partnership benefits both companies. 

“We share our expertise on distribution and wholesalers, and (Jones) can educate us on coffee. We are stronger together,” Taylor James said.

Rick James said he believes this is the kind of partnership that can change a city.

“Too often we let barriers divide us — race, neighborhood, history — but at the root, our stories are more connected than we think,” Rick James said. “We’re all tied to the land, to labor and to the pursuit of dignity. That’s what this is about.”

Growing entrepreneurship

Memphis hip-hop legend 8Ball, of hip-hop duo 8Ball & MJG, and his son Lace Wooten have also invested in Cxffeeblack.

For 8Ball, the decision was personal.

“The first thing that inspired me to invest in the company was my son Lacey. His relationship with Bartholomew and the Cxffeeblack community felt genuine. And I love coffee, so why not invest in a company filled with love that consistently gives back?” he said. 

Wooten said he sees the investment as part of a larger cultural shift.

“Too often, we create, but we don’t own,” he said. “This investment is about reclaiming what’s ours. Hip-hop showed us the blueprint for influencing the world. Now we gotta use that same energy to build businesses we actually own.”

Beyond coffee, Jones, who is a rapper himself, said the moment signals a transformation in how Black artists, entrepreneurs and creatives approach business: “by returning to the root.”

8Ball agreed: 

“It’s time to invest heavily in our people and our communities and show young people that we can be more than gang bangers, drug dealers and scammers.”

With hip-hop’s influence stretching across industries, both Jones and 8Ball said they think the partnership is a blueprint for what’s next.

“Not just cosigning brands, but owning them from the ground up. From the soil to the storefront, Black ownership is the future,” 8Ball said.

And the retiree...

Cxffeeblack’s “Honor Your Roots” Wefunder campaign has garnered more than 500 community investors, each making gifts, on average, of about $600.

Jones said he is grateful for every gift, but there’s one that struck him the most.

“Ms. Vernice (Foster) is our neighbor and has no car. She walks by every day and has been shopping with us since we started,” Jones said. 

Soon after the fundraising campaign began, Foster handed Jones a $20 bill and said, “This is what I want to see in our neighborhood. Thank you for what you are doing.”

“It was so powerful,” said Jones, explaining Foster is on a fixed income. And so her gift, while small, was priceless to him. 

“We already felt like we were community-owned, but this shows it,” Jones said. “It is so much deeper than the cup.”