Meet our Fellows

Johnetta Roberts: Blak Koffee

Louisville, Kentucky

Building community and business through culture and coffee

Johnetta Roberts: Blak Koffee

When is a coffee shop more than just a coffee shop? When it’s a hub of culture, community, business, entrepreneurship, a space of hope and healing, and of course, a place to enjoy great coffee and food. That’s what Blak Koffee, co-founded by Invested Faith Fellow Johnetta Roberts, brings to the Russell neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky’s west end. Blak Koffee’s mission is to “offer a safe & vibrant atmosphere that is welcoming, culturally conscious & conducive for business, relaxation, socialization & networking, all while offering exceptional coffee, & service.”

Blak Koffee exists as a place of welcome for the entire community, from children to seniors, as a hub for everyone, all ages, income levels, and races. A space for this kind of intergenerational connection is deeply influential in any community. “It’s a big cafe where we hope to make people whole”, Johnetta sums up. The physical space is designed to be an environment where people can sit, relax, and spend time together, influenced by Black culture. Johnetta and her partner, Ronyale Smith, hope to build a resource lending library for the community as part of the Blak Koffee shop, as well as to hold events in the space like book readings. In the day to day, it is a space for seniors to drink coffee with each other (the first employee of Blak Koffee is a senior woman working part time!), for children to have a safe place to be after school, for business meetings to be held, as well as positively impacting a food desert in the city. 

Blak Koffee has been brewing in Johnetta’s spirit for many years. Six years ago she began her own company, Forty and One, LLC, and discovered there were not spaces for her to be entrepreneurial. As she says: “I couldn’t just plop down and have access to coffee, internet, and meeting space. It did not exist in the community where I was doing my best work.” She saw this was a deep need and told herself if she ever had the opportunity to fix it, she would.

About Johnetta Roberts

Johnetta was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, as one of five children, raised by a single mom in a neighborhood that did not have a lot of commercial development, but had once been a vibrant area. Her grandfather was an entrepreneur in the 1940s and 1950s, but struggled as a black man to be as successful as he should have been. She grew up in the AME Church, which provided a refuge for her and her family. The church had youth programming “where we were given leadership training, and assessed on our skills and strengths,” Johnetta says. “And I thank goodness for that. Because, you know, out in the world, I was not as encouraged as I could have been.” 

She was bused out of her neighborhood for school, and on her daily hour-long bus rides, she began to notice how the landscape changed. “All of a sudden the houses were bigger, sidewalks were better. I saw Krogers and other grocery stores, Walmarts and nice restaurants.” She could plainly see the differences between the built environment of low-income communities and wealthier ones, but it was not until high school that she began to understand where the differences came from. “As I got through high school. I was able to learn in history class about my culture. I knew about slavery, but also got an understanding on how economically unfair the United States has been to minorities and black people, and also the laws that impacted our neighborhoods. I learned about urban renewal. I learned how companies don’t locate where people of color dwell. This is just not the way the world should be.”

She moved to Louisville for college, believing the larger city would have more opportunity for a young black girl to go further. Instead, she saw the same problems as in Lexington, but on a larger scale. “You get the west end that looks like where I grew up, but then you can drive ten minutes and see better housing, better commercial development, better investment. And as an adult, I was very bothered by that.” She also knew that lack of development in a community results in more dollars being spent outside that community, with the result of millions of dollars leaving it instead of being reinvested in its thriving. 

After college, Johnetta got a job at a community development financial institution, a nonprofit bank that was specifically designed to bring capital into low-income communities. She had a desire to make change. In her time at the CDFI, she was able to make loans to microbusinesses and to borrowers who had many challenges that other banks would not help. Most importantly she was able to do real estate projects in the west end of Louisville, an area of the city that was historically underinvested in. “It’s not impossible,” Johnetta says, “with some training and some money,” to do real estate projects like a kitchen incubator for local chefs. 

Working at the CDFI meant Johnetta was working with roughly 100 people a month on their business loans, and spending that time affirmed her gifts of listening and planning. She was able to help people get capital, create business plans, and complete funding for their businesses. In 2017, Johnetta began her own consulting business, Forty and One, focusing on real estate consulting, public relations, and strategic planning."

One of her first clients at Forty and One was Molo Village Community Development Corporation, led by Reverend Dr. Jamesetta Ferguson. Molo Village was seeking to create The Village at West Jefferson, a mixed-use commercial development in the historic Russell neighborhood in Louisville. The Village at West Jefferson was created to bring services and amenities to the neighborhood that it lacks because of a history of disinvestment.

Not only would Johnetta lead the tenant recruitment for this important project, she took a huge leap of faith and signed a lease herself! She knew the neighborhood needed a coffee shop, and she also wanted to be a part of the long-term impact of the building. “Over the years I have seen coffee shops be transformational in neighborhoods,” Johnetta notes. 

Johnetta may have signed the lease but she knew that she needed a partner to help understand the coffee industry and drink development, establish a menu, and to bring additional heart to the shop. And she needed some financial capital herself to make the coffee shop dream a reality. While these may have felt like big obstacles, “I have to say God took care of the rest over the years that everything that seemed like a deficit has fallen into place for me,” Johnetta relates. She met Ronyale Smith, another Black woman entrepreneur who dreamed of operating a coffee shop in their neighborhood, and the two women found their skill sets complemented each other perfectly. Another tenant at The Village at West Jefferson was a business incubator and innovation hub that was able to provide some funding. 

While the coffee shop space was being build out, Johnetta and Ronyale operated Blak Koffee out of a cart under the stairs at The Village at West Jefferson, serving the community in just 100 square feet! The finished shop opened in April of 2023.

As people continue to drink delicious coffee and connect, Johnetta hopes that Blak Koffee only grows as a community hub. “One of my dreams is that businesses are born at Blak Koffee Cafe,” she says, and that there are economic ripple effects. “I hope to see it rebuilt with the help of Blak Koffee. I hope that others come around us. And before you know it, we look like our own version of Harlem again.” 

Ultimately, Johnetta wants to use her gifts in service of others, especially children.“I do this for the future. Right now there are kids who cannot change what their neighborhoods look like, they can't create a job for their parents, they can't fix their homes, you know, but through my work, kids of 2023 see different in their neighborhoods.”