Red Bay Coffee

Red Bay Coffee is an Oakland, California-based specialty coffee roaster and retailer founded by artist and food entrepreneur Keba Konte. The company roasts coffee and operates cafes in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a flagship cafe on the ground floor of its Oakland headquarters, an Oakland roastery, additional fixed retail locations and a mobile coffee truck. Blends have included single-origin and blended coffees from origins such as Guatemala and Burundi, including a limited-release anniversary blend offered in early 2022.

The business is built around what Konte describes as a "fourth wave" of coffee: an approach that pairs specialty-quality, sustainable coffee production with goals of diversity, inclusion, entrepreneurship and economic restoration. Hiring and service practices emphasize groups historically underrepresented in specialty coffee, including people of color, formerly incarcerated individuals, women and people with disabilities. Cafes are positioned as sober community gathering spaces.

In August 2024 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under subchapter 5 in the Northern District of California, citing pandemic-related debt and a weak Bay Area retail market, while stating that roasting and retail operations would continue.

Founding story

Keba Konte's entry into coffee began with a San Francisco artists' collective that opened Guerilla Cafe in North Berkeley, where the group held art shows and was an early server of Blue Bottle Coffee; at the time Konte was a coffee novice. After opening Chasing Lions, he became uncomfortable with what he saw as the colonial dynamics of specialty coffee, in which farmers who were predominantly people of color performed most of the labor for low pay while roasters and coffee shops were largely owned by others. He left the collective, built a "garden room" off his Oakland garage and taught himself to roast using YouTube videos, founding Red Bay Coffee about a year and a half later in early 2014.

Business model

Red Bay Coffee roasts coffee in Oakland and sells it through company-operated cafes and retail locations in the Bay Area, a mobile coffee truck, and packaged coffee including limited-release blends.

Revenue comes from coffee beverage and packaged coffee sales through owned retail cafes, a mobile truck and roasted coffee distribution.

Traction

As of September 2024 the company operated six fixed Bay Area retail locations, one mobile truck and an Oakland roastery. Bankruptcy filings reported net losses of just over $850,000 from January to July 2024, total liabilities and equity of $3.53 million, estimated assets of $100,001-$500,000, estimated liabilities of $1-10 million and 200-999 creditors.

Latest developments

In December 2024, Ferry Building management confirmed that Red Bay Coffee's Ferry Building cafe would close at the end of January 2025, with its space and the neighboring Reem's space to be combined and renovated for a new restaurant over roughly a year of construction. Konte said he had understood the site to be closer to a temporary popup but received a lease extension allowing four years there, and that he was in talks with the Ferry Building about a new space.