As ‘a love letter to Black women,’ tea shop on KC dividing line empowers community
Editor’s note: During the month of February, in honor of Black History Month and the vibrant Black community in Kansas City, The Star will feature profiles of Black Kansas Citians by telling their stories and highlighting their businesses, causes, and passions.
A Black woman sits cross-legged in a field of lavender, a golden crown resting just above her hair. It’s the first thing visitors notice. Rich and resonant, prominently displayed on the wall, she holds the moon in one hand and in the other, the sun. She is Mother Earth. Delicate painted gold lines circle her wrists.
Nestled between two other murals painted by local artists, she serves as a soothing — yet captivating — welcome into a space she’s meant to imbue with serenity.
Nika Cotton decorated the space, a tea shop she called Soulcentricitea, with the purpose of providing a place dedicated to the peace and mind of Black women.
On a quiet Saturday morning, in front of another mural (this one of a Latina woman), Cotton is behind the counter crafting a lemonade with butterfly pea flower tea, made from a Southeast Asian flower, for her daughter, 11. She pours a cup of hot chocolate for her 8-year-old son. She wipes the counters till they shine — dust had fallen during the last night’s construction touch-ups — and mops the concrete and brick floors.
This shop, her space, has been years in the making. Now that she has it, Cotton, a single mother, is working to do more than just provide for her kids. She wants Soulcentricitea to be able to empower Black women and maybe even inspire her daughter in the process.
Cotton opened Soulcentricitea in the midst of the pandemic near 3000 Troost Avenue, Kansas City’s dividing line.
“The significance of being able to open this space during a pandemic on this racial dividing line in this city is really powerful and really empowering,” Cotton said.
An ‘empowering’ journey
About five years ago, Cotton, who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, got an idea to open a tea shop — a space where Black women could breathe and be unapologetically themselves.
It took another few years, however, before she was able to land her first storefront. That shop, a friend’s former gift shop at East 40th Street and Troost, became a collective of Black women invited to share the space. They contributed to the rent and in return were able to sell their wares — candles, soaps and such.
The group of women who made and sold things empowered and inspired each other, Cotton said.
“So really having that collective, that safe place for all of us to just dream really big with each other is just really empowering,” Cotton said.
Tameka Bell has known Cotton for about five years. They became better friends through the collective, where Bell taught development classes such as storytelling for small businesses. Together they, and other Black women, worked on vision boards.
“Nika is this unique combination of free spirit and savvy businesswoman,” Bell said.
She left the shop to a few other friends after about a year. Now, it’s called the Harvest Moon Botanica, a collective that creates access for women of color artisans. At the time, it wasn’t quite right for her. She realized she wanted something slightly different — a sit-down tea shop.
But that experience inspired her. So she left with a vision. She launched Soulcentricitea in the former Blip coffee roasters space in The Wonder Shops + Flats at 1106 E. 30th St in mid-July, roughly four months into the pandemic.
Battling systemic barriers
“Women,” a quote scrawled in marker on the white board near the entrance begins, “if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul.”
Under the menu offerings of hot and cold teas, tea smoothies and tea lattes named after prominent Black women such as Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou, Cotton wrote that quote from Coretta Scott King.
Soulcentricitea, she said, is a tea room full of soul. Community organizing and social justice are at the heart of the mission. She likes to start conversations with customers about social justice and what people are doing to disrupt systemic injustice, Cotton said.
Troost Avenue, for decades, has been Kansas City’s dividing line. In recent years, a wave of economic development has sprung up, bringing with it fears of gentrification of the area.
When areas gentrify, Cotton’s friend Bell said, Black businesses are often left behind.
“Her putting this shop here is a reminder that we’re still here, that Black business is important and vital,” Bell said. “Black businesses are vital and should not be erased. ... The fact that she decided to put this tea shop in an area that is rapidly gentrifying and give it this Black woman aesthetic is incredibly powerful.”
Even as Black women are depicted as saviors to political and social unrest, especially in recent years, a July 2020 American Psychological Association study found social justice movements often overlook Black women.
In just existing as a Black woman, who has now started a business, Cotton is battling systemic injustice.
Among those systemic challenges: access to credit and constraints on capital, according to the Federal Reserve System’s 2016 Small Business Credit Survey. Black-owned firms apply for funding at higher rates than white-owned firms, the survey found, but are approved at lower rates.
And of those Black firms who didn’t apply for funding, 40% did not apply simply because they were discouraged.
According to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of business owners in the country dropped by 22% (3.3 million) from February to April 2020. Black business plummeted by 41%. Women business owners dropped by 25%.
The challenges minority and women business owners face ties back to the history of segregation and redlining, said Davin Gordon, director of business development and advisory services at AltCap, a Kansas City nonprofit community development financial institution.
“That’s where it starts,” Gordon said.
He said one traditional way of leveraging an asset for a loan is to use equity in a home. And some homes in different parts of the city are devalued for the location, even if it’s the same quality or square footage. That means that the location of someone’s house can prevent access to capital, Gordon said.
Other challenges, he said, include a lack of credit or people who don’t have a good financial system in place who may not have an accountant.
AltCap tries to bypass some of those systemic barriers to be a resource for small businesses. With the pandemic though, he added, the focus has shifted to more of a lifeline. That includes a focus on the Paycheck Protection Program and the KC Regional Small Business Relief + Recovery Loan Fund.
Addressing systemic barriers, Gordon said, will take collaboration from leaders in financial institutions, government, philanthropy and investors.
Other organizations supporting Black-owned businesses include The Porter House KC, Generating Income for Tomorrow (G.I.F.T.), Entrepreneurship Business Basics, Prospect Business Association and Heartland Black Chamber of Commerce.
An award from G.I.F.T. allowed Cotton to get finance help from an accountant and hire an employee who staffs the store during weekdays. Before that, she worked seven days a week, bringing her children to the shop where they would do virtual school.
“As a Black woman,” Cotton said, “I’m kind of used to making something out of nothing and using what I have to take care of myself and my family.”
But Soulcentricitea is about more than getting by for Cotton. She wants to leave a model for other Black women.
Her daughter, at age 11, has started two businesses, she said, and started a savings account. One offers recycling for the building — she will pick it up — and another she started with a friend making bracelets.
‘We are thriving’
The sole purpose of her space can be felt in every nook and cranny. If it’s not murals of beautiful Black women, or tributes to prominent Black sisters, it’s words meant to lift up Black spirits.
A sign on the counter reads “begin each day as if you had wings.” Behind it sits jars and straws of local honey and a gold-colored teapot. A teenager she mentored was waiting on a stool by the window. She taught him aspects of running a business and problem-solving.
Soulcentricitea, Bell said, is “a love letter to Black women.” The atmosphere feels like home, she said, like an “extension of a girlfriend’s living room.”
Cotton has carefully curated Soulcentricitea to be a welcoming, zen place for community. It’s a place where everyone can feel free to be their authentic self, even if the space wasn’t specifically designed with them in mind.
Mack VanPatterson, 38, walked in the door a little hungover, he said, but was captivated by the art all the same. He was in the building for a haircut, had a few minutes to burn and asked what might cure a hangover. Cotton suggested the butterfly pea tea. The “just divine” tea rejuvenated him, he said.
“Now I have a new favorite little local place,” VanPatterson, who is white, said. “The vibe was just right. … It just felt like the right place to be.”
So after his haircut, he went back for an Americano for an energy burst.
In a corner of the store near the entrance, Cotton hung up a sign for the Black women-focused take-a-book, leave-a-book library. Nearby, “What inspires you?” is written on another white board under the tea of the week: rooibos vanilla.
Between two of the murals and near a piano, one sign reads “dream big.”
“Black women are flourishing,” Cotton said. “We are thriving. We are not just sustaining ourselves and feeding our children but we are pouring into our communities.”
On the way out the door, there’s another sign. This one, modeled after a 2015 Drake album, sits above the stairs next to a statue of Buddha: “If you’re reading this, God is a Black woman.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
