E D IT E D BY: G R AC E C A M E R O N, E D ITO R & P U B L I S H E R O F JA M A I C A N E ATS M AG A Z I N E @JA M A I C A N E ATS M AG A Z I N E A N D P H OTO S BY S E L I N A M C C A L LU M @SHOTBYSELINA
C e le b r at in g Lo c a l Bu s i ne s s O wner s Jimson Bienenstock Co-owner, HotBlack Coffee, 245 Queen St W. In the early 1990s Jimson Bienenstock moved to France to learn French. He lied his way into a bartending job in Paris…and “I liked it.” He ended up managing the bar, his French got better and over 15 years he helped to launch Foster’s beer and to set up more than a dozen different bars in France. He remembers one bar, in particular, where he created the space and mood for women to enjoy drinking beer. One night someone started dancing on the table, and since Jimson didn’t stop them from dancing, it caught on, and became a “thing” that is still going.” In France, Jimson - who has a master’s degree in molecular biology and worked in the sugar industry in places like Jamaica - discovered his magic touch of bringing people together. “I enjoyed building karma. I enjoyed the sounds, setting up the music, the lighting, meeting the people, setting the menu and
pricing. I really enjoyed that component of creating something cool and fun,” he says. He has applied this knack of creating spaces for human interaction to his HotBlack Coffee shop. His approach is to carve out comfortable spaces that put service, fun and conversation at the core. At the Queen Street West café, the indoor tables are low, patio tables are oversized and Wi-Fi is not readily available to customers. The furniture design and the refusal to hand out the Wi-Fi password to customers are deliberate, he says. Indoor tables built close to the ground make it less convenient for working on a laptop and outsized patio tables force patrons to share space and thereby interact with each other, he explains. It’s not that Jimson and partner Momi Kishi have anything against folks playing or typing away on their laptop or working in café spaces, “it’s just that we don’t want to be an office,” he says. “We want to be a hub for human interaction. We created the kind of place we would want to go to. Yes, our coffee is ethically sourced and we have great tasting products, but it wasn’t just about making money.”
Article written in March 2022. Jimson (Bienenstock) passed in May 2022. May his memory live on through his love for Queen West and great coffee.
HotBlack Coffee which opened in 2016 has established itself as a hotspot for great coffee, espresso and baked goods as well as a place that encourages patrons to talk to each other because putting service and people at the heart makes for an unbeatable business, Jimson reckons. It has warmed the heart of city, with Toronto Star readers picking HotBlack Coffee as the best coffee shop in 2021. The café has also been the subject of conversation in media around the world. Once the word spread that this little café had taken a stance against free Wi-Fi in its space, the Tonight Show, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Taiwan’s Taipei Times, French newspaper Le Monde and numerous Canadian outlets, including Chatelaine magazine came calling. “We’re just a tiny coffee shop,” Jimson says, his voice still registering a note of astonishment at being featured three times in the prestigious New York Times. HotBlack Coffee has held true to its concept of bringing people together at its three subsequent locations at Yonge and Davisville, Bloor West and Runnymede and the latest at Yonge and Charles. “This is even more important than ever,” says Jimson. While the Yonge and Davisville location (due to pandemic restrictions) has had to convert to a window front pop up, “we’ve still managed to establish interaction with customers”. “The frustration now is how to maintain human contact. It’s tricky for us and our business model. We are definitely hurting with this latest lockdown but, COVID aside, we still believe building long term relationship makes the business more recession proof. Human interaction is the key to the future.”
8
#LONGLIVEQUEENWEST | QUEENSTREETWEST.CA
