Martell Mason got into coffee through trade dynamics, not espresso. He read a book about Black slavery in the Islamic world while teaching English in South Korea, and the chapter on coffee did something to him. The next several years went like this.
An internship in Norway with Collaborative Coffee Source. Field work in Tanzania, where Black traders were unheard of and producers said as much to his face. A trading desk in Istanbul moving green coffee through the Gulf.
A pandemic. A move home to Highland Park. Sepia Coffee Project opened its first sit-down café on October 3, 2024, at 2831 E.
Grand Boulevard in the North End. The space was Gathering Coffee Co. until early September. Mason rebranded the exterior, kept the bones, and got to work.
The roaster has been running since 2021 from a Highland Park micro-roastery. Mason supplies coffee to about thirty wholesale accounts across metro Detroit, plus shops in New York and Minneapolis. The retail café is the part of the business that pays for the rest of it.
The signature blends are named for places. Harmony. Black Bottom.
Paradise. Three blocks of Detroit history that don't show up in most coffee shop menus. Mason sources beans through the Black Producer Program, a Phyllis Johnson initiative that exports from Black coffee farmers in Brazil, where Black producers are wildly under-represented in a country that grows a third of the world's coffee.
He was a Hatch Detroit semifinalist in 2023. He works with the Coffee Coalition for Racial Equity, also Johnson's project. The pour-over and espresso menu reads short.
The seating is small and quiet. The walls do a small amount of explaining without overdoing it. The shop hosts neighborhood programming.
A free photography walk through North End streets. A tasting paired with a discussion about equity in specialty coffee. The occasional fireside talk.
Mason is building toward a roastery and tasting room in Highland Park, slated for fall 2025. He told the Daily Coffee News this isn't really about coffee. It's about giving urban communities, Black entrepreneurs in particular, a model.
"If Sepia was able to do that in Highland Park with all of its challenges," he said, "we can totally do this." Mason has spent the four years since the roastery opened building toward exactly that, with a wholesale book in three cities and a North End café that pays the bills while the broader project takes shape.
2831 E. Grand Blvd., Detroit.
