rooted is a neighborhood enterprise in South Charlotte. We roast coffee, we hire and train neighbors to do the work, and the people who live here help run it.
Brookhill Village and Southside are two public housing communities off South Tryon Street. The land around them has gotten expensive fast. Families who have been here for decades are watching the neighborhood change and doing the math on how long they get to stay.
rooted is one answer to that. A business that hires on these blocks, teaches a real trade, and keeps its money moving through the neighborhood instead of out of it.
We look for what's strong, not wrong
Asset-based community development is the frame we work from. Most funding conversations open with what a place is missing. We open somewhere else, with who is already here and what they already know how to do.
There is real capacity on these blocks. It doesn't show up in a needs assessment and it rarely gets asked about. So we go looking for it, we name it out loud, and we build the business around the people we find.
Neighbors help author this work. Some on payroll, some at the table where decisions get made. That involvement is how the business is designed to run, not something we added on top of it.
Coffee, roasted here
We're starting with small-batch roasting. Coffee makes sense as a first business for a few plain reasons. You can begin without much capital. Roasting is a real skill somebody can learn and carry with them. The product keeps on a shelf for weeks. And churches, schools, and offices across Charlotte already buy a lot of it, week after week.
We're building revenue in a deliberate order, starting with the steadiest.
Anchor accounts
Standing wholesale orders from churches, schools, and offices. Contracted, invoiced, and predictable enough to plan payroll around.
Subscriptions
Recurring bags shipped to households. Better margin, and it builds a base of people with a stake in how this turns out.
Pop-ups
Markets, events, and being present in the neighborhood. It doesn't move much volume, but it's how people meet us and how new hires learn the counter.
Steady accounts come first because payroll has to be reliable before anything else can be.
The longer plan
Coffee is the start. What we're really building is the ability to run something well — hiring, training, pricing, keeping books, making decisions with the neighborhood rather than about it. Once we can do that, we can do it again with a second venture.
Community involvement stays at the center of it. Neighbors on staff, neighbors in leadership, and a business whose wages and decisions land here. We aren't planning a cooperative. We are planning for the people who live here to run this and shape where it goes.
Where we come from
rooted grew out of South Tryon Community United Methodist Church and the neighbors of Brookhill Village and Southside.
Who we learn from
Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. Deep Time at Trinity UMC in Asheville, which has run a coffee social enterprise since 2023.
Where we are now
Active development. Equipment specified and the compliance pathway mapped. We're raising toward launch.
Let's grow something beautiful together
If you fund neighborhood economic development, buy coffee in volume, or just want to know more before you decide anything, tell us who you are. We'll follow up.
Or reach us directly — ddayson@wnccumc.net · (704) 689-4591