Hopefully third time’s the charm for this new coffee shop at 9405 John R. St. in Detroit’s North End.
The French-inspired Café Noir opened a few weeks ago in the space formerly home to Black Coffee, which opened in late 2022. A year before that, the coffee shop was named Kenilworth Cafe.
Now, new life has been breathed into the community spot once again.
While Café Noir is a play on the name Black Coffee, the space has been heavily reimagined and updated, with a French-inspired menu and ambiance, rather than the Afro-centric vibe that Black Coffee took on. The spot serves up a variety of coffee drinks alongside pastries and sandwiches, aiming to “provide a welcoming space for people to connect, socialize, and build community.”
While there’s a lot that is new, the space’s unique and fun outdoor co-working circles, as well as free community WiFi access, are still present.
“It’s a modern vibe, but still has a French provincial aesthetic where we have tables outside and we really want to invite people just to come in [and] relax,” new owner Evan Fay says. “If you want to do work or just grab a quick lunch, we want to have a really cool vibe and be a neighborhood cafe.”
Fay bought the entire seven-unit building that the coffee shop is located in around three months ago. As the coffee shop’s previous manager didn’t plan to continue running the space, Fay decided to take on the challenge himself. But first, he needed some help.
With a background in real estate, the owner was in search of a coffee professional, and quickly found one in Asher Van Sickle. Fay says it was a “match made in heaven,” so he asked Van Sickle to join him as a partner to help create a strong brand for Café Noir.
“He comes from the development side and I come from the coffee and cafe side, but our connection point is community and neighborhood development. That’s a really important thing for both of us,” Van Sickle says. “We want to provide a really good space and we want to provide an excellent cup of coffee, but more so than any of that, we want to be a neighborhood spot that is truly just developing community for the neighborhood here in the North End.”
Not only has Van Sickle worked with other cafes in Detroit, but he has also traveled the country competing in barista competitions and sees the importance baristas and coffee shops have in people’s everyday lives.
“When I visit a city, I travel via coffee shops. I’m a firm believer that every neighborhood deserves a good cafe, and that’s something that this neighborhood really needed was just a really good solid cafe to provide excellence and a sense of community,” Van Sickle says. “Café Noir is developed with that in mind, just a pursuit of excellence and a pursuit of quality and just fostering that sense of community for the North End neighborhood.”
Being from a military family who moved frequently, Fay is not originally from Detroit, but chose to settle down in the city after moving from Alaska. Van Sickle has lived in Detroit for 12 years. Both of the business partners now live very close to the cafe.
“I love, really, everything about the North End and its cultural diversity,” Fay says. “The inspiration for our logo is Josephine Baker, so we did a mural on the side of the building of a young Josephine Baker, and the quote that we use is, ‘To realize our dreams, we must decide to wake up,’ which really kind of captures how in order to realize your dreams, you have to be willing to step out and invest, and the North End really kind of embodies that.”
Van Sickle adds, “It’s full of people chasing after a dream and building something and that’s what we’re also trying to do here at Café Noir.”
In addition to a mission of building community, Café Noir also has a goal of being sustainable, partnering with food waste app Too Good To Go to allow community members to purchase excess pastries and coffee at a lower price.
Looking forward, Fay and Van Sickle hope that the new coffee shop can be a long-standing “quintessential third space” for the local community.
“Yes, we want to offer coffee and really good food but we also want to be community-centric… We just want to offer a space that is inviting and if you need to use it or there’s a private event or whatever, we want to make sure that we’re that space,” Fay says. “We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, a lot of people have been very excited about coming to the space and showing support. We’re really thankful to the community in the North End. We’re really excited. We’re here to be consistent and be available for people to come.”
Currently, Café Noir is still in a soft-launch period, but the plan is to have a grand opening in July alongside other new and rebranded businesses in the same building. While a date is not yet solidified, the event promises to be a fun day showcasing the plaza and the greenspace behind it to the community.
Café Noir is open Monday-Saturday from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. More information and updates can be found on Instagram @cafenoir.det.
