Bonhomie (baa·nuh·mee) Coffee Bar is a Black and queer-owned Haitian-inspired mobile café that is bringing vibrant flavors and community spirit to South Lake Union. Co-owned by Michelle and Victoria Dean, this unique coffee experience offers Haitian coffee beans sourced from Haiti, complemented by handcrafted syrups that evoke the rich flavors of Haitian culture. Serving plant-based drinks as the standard, Bonhomie’s mission is not only to share a cup of coffee but to build connections. Bonhomie is quickly becoming a beloved spot for lovers of coffee and culture.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Please introduce yourselves!
Michelle: My name is Michelle Dean, this is Victoria Dean, and we are the co-owners of Bonhomie Coffee Bar. We are a Haitian-inspired mobile cafe, currently doing our residency in South Lake Union at Pizza by Ruffin.
Tell me a little bit about the coffee that you’re serving and the specialty drinks that you’re making. What’s been popular? What’s resonating?
Michelle: We are brewing Haitian coffee beans. We source them from Haiti Coffee, which actually roasts here locally in Seattle. They’re straight from Dondon in Haiti and we have a couple of different blends that we are using, which is pretty exciting. So baseline is we’re serving Haitian coffee, which at some point in history in the mid-1700s, Haiti was producing over 50% of the world’s coffee.
And though life has happened since then, including some instability, it is really cool to be able to support coffee farmers in Haiti who are bringing back that ancestral support of the industry. We are brewing Haitian coffee beans, but also have created homemade handcrafted syrups that are nostalgic of Haitian flavors. Haitian mocha is made with Haitian dark chocolate and some spices. It reminds me of when my mom would make hot chocolate for the holidays, or when it got below 70 degrees in Florida and it was like, “Hot chocolate moment!”
Our kremas syrup is a really big fan favorite in a latte or in a matcha. It is reminiscent of kremas, which is a Haitian alcoholic holiday beverage. And we’ve turned it into a non-alcoholic dairy-free syrup that is creamy. It has lime zest. It has condensed milk, some spices, and vanilla. It’s iconic. But the current favorite, my current favorite, would be kafe ak lèt. The kafe ak lèt is our spin on a café au lait or coffee with milk. And it’s made with our spice cold brew, some oat milk and some sweetened condensed oat milk. And it’s just sweet and creamy and sold out the last two weeks, which is really exciting.
Are all your drinks oat milk-based?
Michelle: Yes! All of our drinks are served with plant-based milk, that’s the standard. It’s just a personal preference. We’re not even vegan, but we just know that sometimes plant-based milk kind of sits better with us. We also don’t really appreciate all the time when there’s an upcharge for plant-based milk. We want to make our customers’ lives easier, so we don’t charge, we don’t allow tip actually. We build everything into our price so that way you can just choose what you want, pay for what you want, and then enjoy the beverage. And hopefully stay a while, linger with some friends, and have a good time for a minute or two.
So this is week three of the Pizza by Ruffin residency. How have things been going? What’s the reception of the community in Seattle?
Michelle: We were blown away by Seattle and the support that has been shown to us.
Week one we had an extremely long line. I think folks were in line for over an hour, which is great, but also not, right? We don’t want you to actually be waiting forever, but we really, really appreciate the love and support. We’ve done things to help get through the line a lot quicker, but everyone has had a smile on their face. There’s been no complaints. So we really, really, really, really appreciate the support we’ve received so far.
Victoria: And so many Haitians have come out. Haitians in Seattle. Nou la! We are here in the city. And that has felt so special to share our culture and community.
When and where can we find you?
Victoria: We will be posted up every week on Sundays from 11-2 at Pizza by Ruffin in South Lake. Actually, all the pastries that we have are made by Pizza by Ruffin, so we appreciate their partnership and support. But we will be here every Sunday, until we’re not!
How did you two meet?
Victoria: We actually met back in 2018 in business school in Atlanta. And actually, Michelle was in the program before me. So I got to shadow her in one of her classes. And I was like, this is an amazing person.
Michelle: And she fell in love immediately. It was pathetic, honestly.
Victoria: Yeah, I don’t even think she remembers me shadowing her class. I immediately was like, this is going to be a person that’s my best friend forever. But what I think is really special about this is, like, Michelle shared that Bonhomie, that name, came to her when we were in business school. And to see it come to life and be something like this is so special. Like, the ethos of what she wanted at that time always centered around building community. It always centered around partnering with other small businesses. But we did not know that it was going to be a coffee shop. So once she decided to pour into her affinity for coffee and wanted to have a place, I was like, you have to stick with this name. Because there was so much energy and so much positivity behind it to begin with. So I really, really appreciate being able to be involved with partnership and see something come to fruition that your person thought of and manifested so many years ago.
What does Bonhomie mean?
Michelle: Bonhomie is an English word borrowed from French that means “cheerful friendliness.” It’s a random word I saw in a book during business school and knew I would one day start a business called “Bonhomie.” I really love the ethos of cheerful friendliness, and it looks like “bon zanmi,” which means “good friend” in Haitian Creole, so immediately when we were creating our coffee bar, Victoria was the one who was like, you have to name it Bonhomie, that has to be the name.
Intentionalist is all about supporting diverse local-owned businesses and “Spending like it matters.” How does this resonate with you?
Michelle: What really makes a city special isn’t the skyscrapers or the stores that you can find on every corner. It’s the people, and the people create businesses that need to be sustained. They paint culture onto a city. And so supporting a small business is not just supporting a person, it’s supporting the culture that we love in Seattle. We love the diversity, we love the creativity, we love the weirdness. And in supporting small businesses, we are supporting the culture. Period!
You have a little bit of a social media presence, Michelle. Talk to me about how you’ve been building up the Bonhomie brand through social media.
Michelle: I am a hobbyist content creator. I just like talking on the internet. It’s really fun. But I also love how small the internet makes the world feel. I’ve made friends and connections that have become lifelong friendships through platforma like TikTok and Instagram. It was actually pretty amazing that I was able to build a strong community in Seattle.
When we launched the business, more than half the people who have come are like, “Oh, we saw this on TikTok,” or “We’ve been following you for a couple of months,” or “We love that you’re hosting events for Black and brown people in the city!”
What were you doing before you were coffee entrepreneurs? Or what do you do when you’re not being coffee entrepreneurs?
Victoria: When we are not here serving coffee to you all on Sundays, I’m actually in sales in tech.
Michelle: And I’m in brand marketing in tech.
If I remember correctly, you also built this cart and the whole setup yourself?
Michelle: Yes, so when we got the vision to have a mobile coffee cart, which was a way for us to, in a small dose, test the proof of concept for a coffee bar, immediately we were like, we want to find a local woodworker who can build us a cart that’s going to be exactly what we need. And so Dovetail and Rose is a local hobby woodworker in Seattle, in Ballard, who I found on TikTok, reached out to cold, and a couple months later, Ali delivered this amazing cart, which is our home. And so along with the cart he built, we got all the fixings on the inside to make it fully functional. And it feels so cool. Every time we take it apart, I’m like, this is my baby. And it was made up the street from Ali, from Dovetail and Rose.
What are some local businesses that you like to support?
- Well, we got to kick things off with Pizza by Ruffin. We wish we would have discovered them earlier because we probably would have had pizza for our wedding.
- And if we’re not drinking our own coffee, we’re at Boon Boona. It’s ten minutes from our house. The seasonals get me every single time. It’s absolutely one of my favorites.
Any final thoughts?
Victoria: Just a reminder, we are here every single Sunday in South Lake Union right in front of Pizza by Ruffin. So if you are going to be out and about grabbing a cup of coffee, you might as well have a cup of coffee with us and get to meet some new folks, mix and mingle, try different Haitian flavors, flavors that you might not have had before, or if you’re part of the Haitian American community that is here in Seattle, there might be flavors that you are used to experiencing. We will also have meat patties, veggie patties, we have a butter cake, so all these pastries made by Pizza by Ruffin. Please come down and hang out with us!
I heard you also are available for popups and private events?
Michelle: Yeah! In addition to being here every Sunday, we do private events as well with our coffee cart, so you can check out more information about it on the site. But the biggest thing I want people to take away about our coffee bar is we create for lovers of coffee and culture. And so if you fit into the intersection of coffee and culture and you’re interested in taking part in the community we’re building here, please come hang out. You can book us for your wedding, your baby shower, your cousin’s bar mitzvah. We’ll be there, but also you can catch us here on Sundays.