CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A new coffee and tea shop that will preserve Black history is aiming to open along Beatties Ford Road.
Archive will be a shared collaborative space that offers used books, vintage magazines, stationery, locally curated blends of coffee and teas, according to its website.
It will also seek to preserve the history of Black Charlotte while catering to people in the Beatties Ford corridor, its website says.
Cheryse Terry, the owner and founder of Archive, said she was born and raised in west Charlotte.
"I knew I always wanted to have my business rooted in the community that raised me," Terry said.
The shop will be located at 2023 Beatties Ford Road in a shopping center that is filling up with new businesses.
Terry said as the area changes, she wants to be part of the progress by opening a business there but also remember the history.
Terry has been documenting history her whole life, collecting Black vintage publications as her specialty. It’s a hobby that she said started with her mom.
"Every Saturday we would get up, and we would go yard sale-ing and estate sales, and my parents were older than me cause I was adopted, so I was always around vintage things," Terry said.
That love of vintage items turned into a passion for preservation. Terry now has a large collection of Black ephemera, each item documenting a moment in history.
It’s something Terry now seeks to share with the West Charlotte community by combining the sale of Black ephemera with the coffee and tea shop called Archive.
"I want you to come in," Terry said. "You have your latte. You might buy a greeting card, an Ebony magazine. You might be there for a book club. You might be there just for a community resource. ... So, I just want it to be, feel like home but also a community resource."
Terry has already secured the space for the shop but needs $40,000 to complete the necessary infrastructure renovations for plumbing, electrical, and carpentry. The community has rallied behind her, donating more than $7,000 of that in one day via a GoFundMe page, showing the demand for a space like Archive.
"Where is it that’s Black-centered? Where can you go find Black relics?" Terry asked. "There is no space, so having that marry a coffee shop aesthetic concept is perfect, and I feel like it’s what Charlotte needs to preserve the city as it grows."
Terry said she hopes to have the shop open as soon as possible, preferably before summertime.
"It’s more than a coffee shop -- it’s a community space, it’s a community resource," Terry said. "So it’s going to feel like a total alignment in my purpose in building a community and adding to the community to have it open."
Contact Kendall Morris at kmorris2@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.