KALAMAZOO, MI — A new cocktail lounge paying homage to pioneering Black mixologists and offering a unique twist on soul food classics is on its way to Kalamazoo.
Dabney & Co. is slated to open later this summer at 344 N. Rose Street in the former home of Civil House Coffee at the northeast corner of West Kalamazoo Avenue and North Rose.
“At Dabney & Co., our goal is to be a hub of diversity and to make downtown look more representative of the people who live in this community,” said business owner Daniel J May. “We plan to really emphasize inclusion and make sure all people are welcome in our establishment.”
May, a 32-year-old Cleveland native who moved to Kalamazoo in 2009, said after organizing a Juneteenth bar crawl in 2018, he recognized there was a need for an entertainment space in the city that was both more diverse and more accommodating to people of color.
That recognition led to May creating his own company, Public Skool, that focuses on creating events that have a strong focus on inclusivity. The events include everything from Sunday day parties to an annual Juneteenth Freedom Dinner that raises money for the National Bailout Collective to his 2020 celebration known as AfroFest.
Related: AfroFest creates ‘space to embrace identity’ at Black History Month celebration
When he saw an opportunity to open his own lounge in an aged brick building with sweeping high copper ceilings at the corner of West Kalamazoo and North Rose, he leapt at it.
A former Greenleaf Trust Scholarship winner, who has a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University’s Haworth College of Business, May is in the process of finishing up his MBA online through the University of Illinois’s Gies College of Business.
The entrepreneur said in addition to craft cocktails, his menu at Dabney & Co. will be tapas-driven and feature dishes such as black-eyed peas hummus and collared green salads. The goal, he said, is to take traditional soul food classics and reinvent and reimagine them in an approachable fashion.
The vibe he hopes to capture is one filled with laughter and sounds of soul, funk, jazz, R&B and disco music, where servers are laughing and dancing with patrons and people leave more information than they arrived.
“We believe that part of how he heal our country and our communities is by being more involved with each other and what better way to do that than through the beautiful stylings of soul and funk music and having a drink and a cocktail,” May said.
“We believe that people will let their guards down to get to learn about their neighbors by surrounding themselves with each other,” he said.
The cocktail lounge will be one of just a few Black-owned entertainment spaces in downtown Kalamazoo, joining The Xperience event venue in Farmers Alley and Green Door Distilling Co., which as of late, is co-owned by Pistons’ legend Ben Wallace.
Related: Ben Wallace joins ownership group at Kalamazoo’s Green Door Distilling Co.
May will pay homage to pioneering Black mixologists such as John Dabney, who the space is named for.
Dabney, credited with inventing the “hail-storm” mint julep spent the first 41 years of his life enslaved in Virginia, born to a mother who was a cook and maid and father who was a carriage driver. After establishing a reputation for his bartending and innovative recipes, his enslaver hired him out.
While Dabney did not receive a wage for his work, he was allowed to keep his tips and eventually used that money to buy his freedom and his wife’s, May said. Dabney went on to open two restaurants of his own in the 1860s in Richmond, Virginia which he ran until his death in 1900.
“It was really important that we be intentional with the name we were choosing as being the only Black-owned establishment of this kind in Kalamazoo,” said May.
“This was a way to pay homage to (Dabney) and all the other Black mixologists and service staff who went unnoticed over all of those years. So much of the craft cocktail industry was founded on Black mixologists and servants and a lot of the foundational cocktails we have in this country started in the Black community.”
May said they have found some of those nostalgic cocktails and recipes that predate prohibition from Black mixologists.
“You’ll get not only a taste of that recipe but a taste of what it was like enjoying a craft cocktail pre-1910, which I think will be a phenomenal experience for our guests to connect them back to the stories of why these things happened in our country, but to the fact that there was beauty to be found even amongst the chaos of that time and the despair going in the Black community with injustice and civil rights,” he said.
May announced his latest endeavor with intention on Juneteenth, pointing out that the federal holiday is one to commemorate the end of slavery in America.
The date, 1865, also appears in the Dabney & Co. logo. June 19, 1965, is when Black Americans enslaved in Galveston, Texas learned from Union troops they were free, with the Emancipation Proclamation issued two and a half years earlier.
“Juneteenth provides an opportunity for people to celebrate the culture and the beauty of what it means to be Black,” he told the Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive.
“It’s about empowerment, beauty, culture and the people. And being a Black business owner and facing biases and racial disparities I’ve had to face over the years, to be in this position and to show strength as John Dabney did during his tenure and then to provide this type of space for the community, not just for my community but for everybody, I believe it’s important.”
Dabney & Co., which has a motto of “Liberation through Spirits” will be open five days a week, feature live music on the weekends and offer event space for businesses to rent out during the day for meetings, luncheons and other functions.
For more information or to keep up to date on announcements, visit Drinkswithdabney.com or follow Dabney & Co. on Facebook.
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