With three young children and a full-time job as a technology executive, Leecox Omollo has to be intentional about how he spends his spare time.
So as he and his wife, Martha, grow Kikwetu Kenya Coffee Company from a pet family project into a profitable business, they’ve thought carefully about why it’s a worthwhile endeavor.
“For us to say, ‘Let’s add something else,’ it had to have some meaning,” Omollo said. “Making it a compelling ‘why’ was the hardest part.”
Kikwetu, a Chicago-based specialty coffee company that has become a staple of area farmers markets and is starting to appear on retail shelves, has grounded its purpose in fostering community and connections between people and places, specifically between the founding couple’s native Kenya and their adopted home in Chicago.
An alumnus of the Polsky Center’s Small Business Growth Program, Kikwetu sources its direct-trade coffee beans from small farms in Kenya and serves creative, handcrafted drinks featuring local ingredients. Across Chicago, you can find them at corporate catering events, farmers markets and pop ups.
Counter to the rushed on-the-go coffee culture, Kikwetu’s ethos encourages customers to slow down and relate to their fellow humans.
“We are on a journey to create a coffee company that creates connections,” said Omollo, who lives in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. “We are passionate about finding people from all over the world and the things that bind us together.”
The idea for Kikwetu was sparked by Omollo’s own feeling of connection. During a business trip in Michigan, Omollo stopped into a small coffee shop in Grand Rapids and fell in love with the coffee, which he learned came from Kenya. For Omollo, who was born and raised in Nairobi, and went to college and graduate school in Michigan before getting his MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and settling in Chicago, it felt like a bridge between his two worlds.
As the notion of starting his own coffee company percolated in his imagination, serendipity stepped in. While commuting home from a consulting job in suburban Libertyville, Omollo grew cold waiting for the train and noticed a coffee roaster across the tracks. He went in and met the owner of Hansa Coffee Roaster, who became his coffee mentor and, eventually, his roaster, making the small-batch, specialty-grade coffee that sets Kikwetu apart.
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This story was first published by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
