EAST GARFIELD PARK— West Side residents and plant enthusiasts can now get something to eat and drink while browsing the Garfield Park Conservatory.
Monday Coffee, a Black-owned business founded by South Side natives Amanda Christine Harth and Felton Kizer, will be available 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at the Horticulture Hall room at the conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave.
The partnership will run for three months to bring long-awaited food and beverage options to the area’s most popular attraction. The menu will include hot pour-over coffee, espresso, hot cocoa and teas, as well as kombucha and pastries sourced from local entrepreneurs.
Kizer and Harth sought out the partnership with the conservatory so residents in the area could have more options to eat, drink and connect with others over a cup of coffee in the neighborhood, Harth said.
“Being able to provide a food and beverage option in that area is super important. There’s no bodegas. I don’t even know if there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts,” Harth said.
The pair started Monday Coffee “as a way of keeping people connected using this everyday beverage,” Harth said.
Coffee beans are native to Ethiopia. Today, coffee is grown in in many countries across Africa, Central and South America and Asia. But still, there are very few Black and Brown entrepreneurs in the coffee industry, Harth said.
“On the front-end, there aren’t a lot of Black-owned coffee companies. We definitely wanted something that represented who we were in something that’s essentially part of our heritage. We talk about it all the time with people, where beans come from,” Harth said.
Kizer and Harth use Monday Coffee as a way to introduce coffee to people less familiar with the industry. Since the company has an emphasis on educating customers about roasts, flavor profiles and the origins of various coffee beans, the new partnership can allow new groups of people to discover coffee in a way that suits them.
“People are coming into coffee from very different stages in their lives,” Kizer said. “I used to hate coffee. But part of that is I used to drink [bad] coffee. I went through that experience of learning and growing and expanding my palate. So it’s really easy for me to help people with that.”
South Siders also can try Monday Coffee products at Retreat at Currency Exchange Cafe, 305 E. Garfield Blvd. Harth and Kizer are in residence at the cafe until the end of December.
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