This year, in celebration of Black History Month, we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with local Black-owned business owners about entrepreneurship, their businesses in Oak Park, and more.
Ken Scott
Smoothie King
1016 Lake Street
Select your next smoothie here.
What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Don’t give up on your dreams, and just make sure that you keep pushing and striving forward, and success will come.”
Watch our interview with Ken:
Marz Timms
Comedy Plex Comedy Club
1128 Lake St Lower Level
Get tickets to their next show here.
Why is it important for us to come together as a community and celebrate Black History Month?
“Cause we’ve been here, we’ve been here for a long time, we’ve done so many things and helped build this country that we all live in and everyone from all over the world. This is a melting pot, and I believe it is the greatest country in the world because of all the voices we have here.”
Watch our interview with Marz:
Sherman Edwards
Comedy Plex Comedy Club
1128 Lake St Lower Level
Get tickets to their next show here.
Can you tell us about your business and what inspired you to start it?
Our business is a Comedy Club/ Event Space in a basement in the heart of Downtown Oak Park. I was working with one of our owners on corporate shows, workshops, and team-building events, and whenever we did shows in Oak Park, I would always notice how cool the downtown area was but also noticed there wasn’t much going on after it got dark. During the pandemic, corporate stuff started to slow down, and we started talking about looking into a brick-and-mortar option. Oak Park seemed like the perfect place to do it. It’s close enough to the city but not so close to interfere with the other larger clubs in the city.
What makes your business unique within the Downtown Oak Park community?
It’s a great place to take a date, hang out with friends, or get away from the things that are bothering you during the day.
What challenges have you faced as a business owner, and how have you overcome them?
We haven’t overcome everything, but basically, having a better understanding that “the show” is a fraction of what goes into co-running a comedy club. The biggest challenge will always be getting people in seats even when the headliner isn’t as big of a name because sometimes the lesser-known comics should be getting just as much attention.
Jacques Shalo
Kribi Coffee
149 Forest Ave.
Check out their latest lattes here.
Can you tell us about your business and what inspired you to start it?
Kribi Coffee Air Roastery was born from a deep-rooted connection to coffee and a vision to change the industry for the better. I was quite literally born into the coffee world—on my family’s coffee farm in Cameroon, where I spent my early years surrounded by the sights, sounds, and aromas of coffee cultivation. Though my career led me to the U.S., where I built experience in business and marketing, coffee was always in my heart.
Years later, I discovered air roasting—an unheard-of method that roasts coffee using hot air instead of traditional drum roasting. This process preserves the coffee’s natural flavors while eliminating the bitterness and smokiness found in conventional roasting. I immediately recognized its potential to revolutionize the industry and knew I had to bring it to the forefront.
With that mission in mind, I teamed up with my son, Jeremiah Shalo, whose expertise in brand strategy and design helped shape the identity of Kribi Coffee, and Amir Semsarieh, a master roaster whose precision and passion bring our air roasting at a larger scale to life. Together, we founded Kribi Coffee Air Roastery with the goal of not just serving great coffee but also paying farmers more and giving people a truly fresh, innovative coffee experience.
We opened our first café in 2019 in Forest Park, Illinois, as a way to put air-roasted coffee directly into people’s hands. Since then, we’ve continued to grow, sourcing high-quality beans from farmers worldwide—especially from my home country of Cameroon, where we proudly feature our flagship coffee, Mt. Oku, a coffee that even caught the attention of Starbucks co-founder Zev Siegl.
Expanding into Oak Park was an incredibly exciting milestone for us. In 2022, we opened Kribi Coffee CrossFunction, our first Oak Park location, inside the CrossFunction shared workspace. This unique café brought our air-roasted coffee to a new audience and allowed us to become an integral part of the Oak Park business community. Then, in 2023, we expanded again with Kribi Coffee Albion, a vibrant café in the heart of Downtown Oak Park. Each of these locations reflects our commitment to great coffee, community, and innovation, and we’re grateful to be growing alongside such an amazing neighborhood.
What makes your business unique within the Downtown Oak Park community?
Kribi Coffee is not just another café—we’re a full-fledged coffee roastery that air roasts all our coffee in-house, setting us apart from any other coffee shop in the area. Our process results in an incredibly clean and smooth cup of coffee, and because we roast in small batches on-site, our customers get the freshest coffee possible.
But beyond the product, we believe in building a strong sense of community. Our cafés are designed to be more than just places to grab a cup of coffee—they’re spaces where people connect, collaborate, and feel at home. Whether it’s professionals working at Kribi Coffee CrossFunction or families and coffee lovers gathering at Kribi Coffee Albion, we’re creating experiences that go beyond just serving drinks.
As a Black-owned business, we’re also proud to bring a different perspective to the coffee industry. Coffee has deep African roots, yet Black-owned brands are still underrepresented in the specialty coffee space. By sourcing from African and other small-scale farmers, we ensure that more value is returned to the people who grow the coffee. Our Oak Park community has embraced this mission, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to bring something truly special to the neighborhood.
What challenges have you faced as a business owner, and how have you overcome them?
Running a specialty coffee business comes with its fair share of challenges, especially as an independent, Black-owned company in an industry dominated by large corporations. One of our biggest challenges has been educating people about air roasting—many coffee drinkers are familiar with traditional roasting methods, but they’ve never had coffee prepared this way before. Convincing customers to step outside their comfort zones and experience something new requires continuous engagement, storytelling, and product education.
Another challenge has been scaling the business while staying true to our mission. As a small, independent brand, gaining access to the same resources as big-name coffee chains is difficult. But we’ve stayed resilient by focusing on our strengths—our unique roasting process, our community-driven approach, and the unmatched quality of our coffee. We’ve leaned into word-of-mouth marketing, strategic partnerships, and customer loyalty to grow our presence.
Like many other businesses, we’ve also faced supply chain disruptions and rising costs, but we continue to adapt by working directly with our farmer partners, cutting out unnecessary middlemen to ensure sustainability on both ends. At the heart of it all, we’ve remained focused on our core values: innovation, fairness, and quality.
