When Dr. Fatimah Turner opened Orange, New Jersey’s Inner City Café, it was never just about lattes or pastries. It was about creating a space where her community could come together.
“The reason why I decided to open Inner City Café is because I realized that there was nowhere for community members to meet, there was nowhere for us to gather,” she told theGrio. “We were all kind of scattered. There’s so many different political organizations and nonprofit organizations, and everybody was kind of like doing their own thing, and there was no cohesion.”
Her vision was to build more than a coffee shop. “I had the idea to make this sort of like a meeting space, and then it just sort of evolved. It started off as a coffee shop where we used to have, like, coffee and conversations, to now, a place where people come and break bread, an event space,” she explains, likening the café to The Pit from “A Different World.”
Wanting it to reflect her spirit, Dr. Turner swapped out the typical neutral coffee shop color palette for her favorite color, pink. “I wanted to make it cute. I wanted to make it sophisticated. I wanted to bring something to the community that people are not used to having,” she shared.
When she opened Inner City Cafe in 2021, Dr. Turner was finishing her Ph.D. and struggling with pandemic-era burnout. “I had lost sort of motivation. I swear, during the pandemic, when I was finishing up my PhD, I almost felt like, you know, why am I even getting this degree, the world’s about to end. And then I’m thinking that if I’m feeling this way, there may be other people who are feeling this way too. There wasn’t a place for me to work and sort of feel motivated. So I decided to make a space.”
That space, now brimming with warmth, food, energy, and a uniquely pink decor, was built from scratch. “I started with nothing. I started with no money. I started with a hope, a dream and a desire to serve,” she says. “I also was born and raised in Newark with nothing, and I’ve always had to make something out of nothing. So I just used my community service and my networks to help me.”
She remembers those early days vividly—intimate coffee and conversation events with barely three to four chairs in the space.
“There were no grants. There was no money. I didn’t have capital,” she reflected. “I just called on my network and God to help me.”
Even now, she leans on that foundation as she navigates today’s financial landscape filled with inflation, layoffs, and a volatile job market. “While it is a business and the business needs to make money, I do know that the ultimate goal for this café is to serve my community,” she says. “I’ve seen an impact. So business has slowed down, you know, there’s very little grants out there for women-owned businesses, and so I just have to be creative. In order to keep my doors open, I have to call on my community because Inner City Café does not just belong to me. It belongs to the community.”
For many, it feels like home, and like when you walk into anyone’s house, the owner is right there to greet you.
“You’re going to see [Inner City Cafe is] Black woman-owned. I’m always here. I’m always greeting people, sort of like Cheers. I know everyone’s name.”
Still, she admits the weight of her role as a female entrepreneur. “Women entrepreneurs are hyper visible and hyper invisible,” she explains. “Nobody really sees the struggle that I experience. Nobody sees what it’s like to be a female, trying to fit into this male-dominated world, trying to, you know, play multiple roles, trying to still be feminine and soft, but being strong enough to make people hear me and listen to me. It’s a heavy crown.”
Her message to other women is simple: “I would want women to know that it’s okay for them to recognize that these are things. It’s okay for them to recognize that this crown is heavy. It’s okay for support from other business owners and other female owners. I want women to know that there’s enough out there for all of us, and if we’re going to sustain we have to rely on each other and not compete against each other.”
As a single mother balancing multiple jobs, Dr. Turner says she looks to the women before her—like her grandmother—for strength while practicing her own self-care.
“I’m motivated by my ancestors. I’m motivated by the women who came before me. I take lessons from what I learned from these women who came before me,” she admits. “But I also look into the things that they did not have. I call on my network when I need them—if I need to rest, if I need to, maybe, lend my crown to someone else to help me with this until I can do it. And I also have to remind myself that being strong means not being afraid to help, it is taking a rest.”
Ultimately, for Dr. Turner, Inner City Café isn’t just a business. It’s a love letter to her city, her ancestors, and to every woman who has ever carried a heavy crown but kept walking anyway.
