Owning It: W/N W/N Coffee Bar
Nikisha Bailey and Matt Nam, community-driven
Co-Owners of W/N W/N Coffee Bar
tell us how they met, what keeps them going everyday, how they find inspiration, and their plans for Philly’s coolest late-night cafe.
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
Why do the two of you do this? Why do you have W/N W/N?
Nikisha: I think we both have different reasons but we both have one similar reason. Community. I love coffee, I love community, and always wanted to have a coffee shop/bar thing but it was always a thought in the back of my head. Like it’d be really cool if I had a bar and everybody could drink and hang out and be friends. Then Matt approached me one day and said ‘Would you actually like to have a bar and coffee shop?’
I didn’t even know he knew I wanted to do something like that.
How long ago was that when he approached you with the idea?
NB: A year and a half ago and we’ve also been friends for about 11 years now.
Where did you meet?
Matt: In Brooklyn, at a 4th of July BBQ my cousins weren’t supposed to be having.
NB: Yeah my friends knew his cousins and said ‘hey there's a BBQ’ and we met there 12 years ago. He’s been in the Philly area for a while and I happened to come across his space. It was kinda like kismet a little bit. The way the timing and opportunity presented itself.
Why did you approach her? Why didn’t you just go on your own?
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
Matt: Well anyone who knows Nikisha, knows she is an operations specialist. She’s also someone I trust. My idea for this space was a little bit more militant. I often believe grown up people like myself or yourself, we’re not taught how to own things, we’re not really taught how to build our own communities and so taking on the space in an area that's rapidly gentrifying was an opportunity for us to do just that for our community.
It's not to be exclusive, everything is inclusive. Everyone’s a part of this. I always tell customers when they want to host an event here this is not my space, this is our space and I just want to continue that kind of momentum where we’re just continuing to build a community and teach about ownership because it’s felt great.
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
Before W/N W/N, what were you doing? What was your life like?
NB: I work at a record label. I still work there. My life was a lot more, transactional, in terms of doing business for business sake, and at Win Win I get to meet people and get to know my customers that come in every day. I think at my other job, that doesn’t always present itself.
Matt: I worked for a tech company that designed ontologies powered by artificial intelligence to research learning models to accelerate data capture / aggregation / organization. This helps life science companies design new drugs for patients and create clinical trials to find principal investigators for clinical trial outcomes. That was a hell of a task!
Do you try to get better at things on your own, or search for help first with things you’re not so good at?
Nikisha: I’m pretty good at knowing what I can and can’t do. I try to get better on my own at first, but then realize I'm not going to get this anytime soon so I should ask for help.
Matt: When I was younger, I was a little more scrappy, I tried to figure everything out for myself. Running the business now, I feel like I don’t have the time to do that on my own. I think I bring less value spending more time trying to hang art on a wall than getting someone who already knows how to do it, you know?
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
LEARNING. TEACHING. DOING.
Which of those are your strongest/weakest attributes?
NB: Teaching is my strongest. When I’m asking you to do something, I want you to understand why. I love explaining things and making sure people fully know where I’m coming from.
I don’t know if learning is necessarily the weakest but I still feel like I'm learning every day. The learning is the one that I'm probably less receptive than if I’m teaching.
Matt: Learning, teaching, doing... those are 3 tenants that everyone should probably embody. You can’t be weak at one of them. I think I'm a good teacher but I LOVE the learning. Voracious reading, constantly reading, my weakest is teaching. my strongest is doing. It’s probably better that you identify it so that you can work on your strengths and outsource your weaknesses.
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
I hate asking this question but I have to. What would you do if you didn’t have W/N W/N?
NB: Something in music.
Matt: I think i’d still be looking for something like this. I talk to my friends so much, I’m a big believer in buying blocks of an area and building with your community. I'd still be doing things along those lines. This is something I’ve been thinking about ever since I was a kid and I’m probably going to be doing it for a long time.
NB: I think having this has made me develop skills in more current world terms of having an entire staff and having to be the person who is always accountable no matter what because there is no one to go after me. I could keep that up anywhere now.
You said you’re doing this because of community and music and bridging the gap between them. Why do you feel you really need to do that?
Matt: I was an immigrant from Jamaica, came to this country and saw my parents really struggle and never wanted that for myself. I want all my needs met and realize I can provide opportunities and provide those needs for other people too. I can help people grow by having a business, which is why I have tried to have a few over the years. I’ve seen what happens when people let evil people control their fate, and there are a lot of evil people out there controlling other people’s fate. I’d like to be one of the good guys helping my community and helping people grow.
Nikisha: I work at Atlantic Records, am chapter chair for Women in Music, a governor for the Career Academy, and have W/N W/N and people often ask ‘Why do you do all of this?’
It’s because I never had the opportunity to, no one in my family or around me has. I feel even if I can’t do something, I have to at least try because no one before me has. Nobody in my family has owned a business.
I owe it to my family, my future, my community, and everyone around me it can be done. I’m from a single person household, one of 5 kids, my mom raised us by herself. I lived in a dangerous neighborhood in St Louis and I made it out
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters
You're pretty hands on. What's working? What's not working?
Matt: Sometimes I feel like I do a little too much. I mean I think I like to teach business 1-on-1 rather than teaching everyone. Giving people responsibilities, which is what I like to do, having them lead at something, kind of helps them to understand how difficult this is. I don’t think I’ve had large scale meetings where i’m really trying to instill my personal values, but I think that's a really good idea to probably start doing and see how it works
It sounds like you’ve reached your initial goals with W/N W/N to create a community and keep EVERYBODY having a good time, so what’s left? What is the future of W/N W/N now?
Nikisha: Just to continue to grow. Become larger in Philly.
Really want to just work on the relationships we have, and build some new ones.
Why Philly? Why not somewhere else?
NB: Well, I’m from St. Louis, born and raised there for the first 20 years of my life. I've been here a couple times, but never really spent time here. I'd go to shows when I came down here to visit Matt and fell in love with the city. I feel it’s super creative and not as crazy as NYC. I run into all these different creatives here and have moments with them and that drew me here too. I really liked the pace of life here.
Artwork created by: Juligarbo (left) & Maureen Baquero (right)
What is the ‘Change the Artist Out’ concept all about?
Matt: We don’t want anything that’s mundane. Mundane is stagnancy, so we want the space to continuously rotate everything. Whether it’s the food, the art, the events; everything possible that can be rotated.
Also our mission statement is that this is a safe space for creatives, and we want to give many different types of people the opportunity to show their work, to show their labor of love.
We have to continuously rotate their work out to
make that a reality.
Nikisha: I work with creatives in my day-to-day and this is the perfect way to mash up everything that I love: coffee, cocktails, art, music, I think it’s basically just a way to conceptualize all of our favorite things and still try to do something good and bring people together.
Anymore jazz nights?
We had a lot of fun at the last one.
NB: YES jazz night was so cool. We have to find more jazz musicians to come down. We want to have a lot more music here.
What are some other events you’re excited about? Is there something this year that maybe you haven’t experimented with last year.
NB: I think we’re planning to do some cool DJ nights. Like some cool, popping’ ‘wouldn’t expect to see that person here’ nights.
I have this one idea, it’s about bringing together people of color in coffee: could be a barista, someone that owns a cafe and share their experiences with people in coffee and try to create a network of spots to visit in and outside of Philly and NYC. You could go anywhere in LA and know where a coffee shop owned by a black woman might be.
Photo by Hadiya Gaiters