Looking for coffee at the Obama Presidential Center? The '44 Reserve' blend has 40-year Chicago legacy

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Chicago Sun-TimesLooking for coffee at the Obama Presidential Center? The '44 Reserve' blend has 40-year Chicago legacysuntimes.com

Rhonda Stivers always loved coffee.

As an international flight attendant, the native Chicagoan would frequent coffee shops around the world. And she purchased a bright-red espresso machine, her first, in 1976.

By 1985, she convinced her then-husband, Greg Stivers, to open Color Me Coffee in Lake View — making them one of the few coffee shops in Chicago to roast beans on-site. That same year, a young Barack Obama first arrived in Chicago.

Forty years later, the two have become linked. Color Me Coffee was recently named the sole coffee supplier for the newly opened

Provided by Rhonda Stivers

Stivers, 71, said Color Me Coffee was the first Black roastery in the country. The couple spent years traveling Europe and researching the industry, prior to opening its shop.

“No one was roasting in Chicago, so we took a leap of faith because it provided an opportunity,” she said. “It provided us the opportunity to provide coffee to other coffee shops, cafes.”

The business roasts beans sourced from over 30 countries, including many Caribbean countries.

“We are sticklers about coffee. We don't cut any corners. We don't throw additives in,” she said. “We are coffee purists, and we are about the single origin of beings.”

When the couple divorced in the early 1990s, Greg Stivers took over the roastery and turned it into a wholesale business, called Stivers Coffee, with his own collection of coffee. Clients included a number of businesses, such as cafes, ice cream shops and colleges.

Rhonda Stivers took over the retail business for the Color Me Coffee collection, selling at kiosks and carts at McCormick Place, Navy Pier and the Chicago Riverwalk. She stopped producing Color Me Coffee a decade ago but remained in the business with her ex-husband “from afar,” she said. Jason Stivers, the couple's son, also works at Stivers Coffee.

“I got my coffee from Stivers Coffee. Anything I did in coffee, Greg was my supplier,” she said.

Greg Stivers, 71, suffered a debilitating stroke a couple years ago, leaving him “incapacitated,” Rhonda Stivers said. She then stepped in to help.

“We didn’t want the business to go away,” she said.

She gained control of the company, and in October, she was back in the coffee business.

“Rhonda … repurchased the company and is investing in it to excel us,” Kavia Simmons, Stivers Coffee's roastery manager, said. Simmons, who learned the business from Greg Stivers, started her own coffee company,

Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times