"Local artist and entrepreneur Keba Konte launched Red Bay in 2014 as a vehicle for coffee equity, with a prime mission to enlist African Americans to learn the historically white specialty coffee business. The Fruitvale roastery serves as a public meeting space (also a food pop-up and performance venue), as well as an airy cafe, of course, featuring a mural of the African continent painted in shiny-leaved live plants. It’s easy to imagine Oakland’s future creative, intellectual, and political life taking shape here, on the open laptops of Red Bay’s mostly young, AirPodded customers, sipping mugs of the shop’s signature Coltrane or East Fourteenth roasts. [$]" - John Birdsall
Patricia Chang