Alexis Kimbrough and the Heart of Birmingham’s Herban Soul Café

By Sym Posey The Birmingham Times While driving home from work one evening in 2022, Alexis Kimbrough noticed an empty building downtown with a sign in the window that read, “For Lease or Sale, Café, Coffee Shop, or Bar”. She thought to herself, “we don’t need any more coffee shops. We don’t any more bars or lounges. And then the light bulb just kind of went off we need an herbal tea café.” Kimbrough began her research and found Birmingham did not have a “true” tea house, she said. “If you want tea, you could go to coffee shops, or grab weight loss or Boba teas (a combination of milky tea and chewy tapioca pearls) but if you like herbal tea or true tea you couldn’t get it,” Kimbrough said. That same evening that she passed the building, Kimbrough said she started writing down her vison. “I’m very faith driven. I was like ‘Lord why are you giving this to me?’ I didn’t know where to start or what I was doing. But I said I was going to be obedient… It wasn’t even a week later when one of my mentors reached out to me about a grant competition....