Black-owned coffee shop in Shoreline targeted with new threats of racism KIRO 7 News Seattle

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SHORELINE, Wash. — Black Coffee Northwest, a coffee shop in Shoreline, has been receiving racist, violent phone calls and voicemails for the past three weeks. This isn’t the first time the shop has dealt with vandalism or racist threats. Back in 2020, the shop was hit with Molotov cocktails in an attempt to burn it down.

Soriah Swinton and her co-worker are the baristas that took the original phone call.

Instantly, it was just like, right off the bat, like wearing, and you guys are the worst, and thats when I pulled out my phone and was like, Im going to record this because this is a hate crime, Swinton said. She told KIRO 7 that it keeps happening.

This is like, literally, a hate crime. I dont know how else to explain it besides that, Swinton said. It made me sad that the world is still like this.

Erwin Weary is the CEO and co-owner. He said it was disheartening to experience that.

Unfortunately, its not stuff that I haven’t heard before, but it really didn’t sit well with me because a lot of young people were hearing this. Weary wants to get this out to the public to bring awareness to whats happening.

The biggest piece of the puzzle in putting this thing out there is to bring awareness and show people we still have a long way to go, he said. However, despite the hatefulness, the coffee shop has a strong base of loyal customers.

Theyre not going to stop. They’re not going to go away. I wish the racists would get that through their heads, said Reinhard. Its such a great business and they dont deserve this.

Its the support from Reinhard and so many others that Weary said keeps them going.

Black people definitely belong here, were important in the community, were always going to be in this community and together you know we can do amazing things, Weary said. Weary said he has not filed a police report yet but plans to do so in the next couple of days.

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