Our Story

The Black Bean is not a question of when or how. Ride the wave of two friends who really just have one question to answer: What the hell were you thinking?

The Partnership

Omu: Are you kidding me? Chris is a creative genius with all the skills I don’t have (math and patience, mainly). To not have pounced on the opportunity to work with someone who has a knack for perfection, would have been my greatest crime.

Also, his heart is in the right place, which he uses all the time mindfully. Finally, we both disagree with this old wive’s tale, “It’s bad luck for friends to do business together.”

 

Coffee

Christian: It’s that one thing that keeps me close to my Lola everyday, especially now that she’s gone. She introduced me not just to coffee, but to the very habit of it — the joy in sipping something warm as you go about your day.

Give me any kind of coffee and there’d be no room for hate. I remember going to Starbucks when I was in college, and my first order was the Strawberry Frappucino. No shame in that, I loved it for all its strawberry sweetness and how now, it still throws me back into those (youthful) days. Fun times! But of course I went through serious unlearning and “re-learning” when I decided to turn it into business. I had to know what good coffee is, what makes coffee bad and why some people (for instance, Omu, appreciates stale long black) genuinely enjoy it. The whole process was interesting for me because I had to devote myself in the universal standard, treating my personal preferences as secondary and being okay with that.

So we’re down to preference. My vision of The Black Bean is really getting to satisfy diverse preferences, not just by adjusting completely to what a person likes but serving a disarming experience of coffee. Some might stop at knowing you; we take the shot at knowing you better — pun intended.

So are there really too many cafes? Don’t think so.

 

The Cafe

Christian: My passion translated into a tangible extension of my life I’ll always be proud of.

Omu: Let’s put it this way, Chris built the cafe I had in dream. He built not the cafe I want to run, but the cafe where I can spend the whole day in. I’m not talking about interior, I’m talking about the entire experience. I can have coffee anywhere, but our staff? They’re the pillars of every experience you’ll have at TBB which you’ll remember for a long time. You won’t find the kind of team elsewhere.

I’ve enjoyed great coffee in countless coffee shops. To serve good coffee is a given. But how it’s served is what makes a story.

 

2020

Christian: We’d love to romanticise how our survival’s like in 2020 but thank you, next!

 

The Hell Were You Thinking

Give us 90 degrees of it and we’re good for all eternity.