SUFFOLK, Va. — The cars bustle down Washington Street in Suffolk, but if you pause for a moment, you'll be in store for coffee and a lesson in Wall Street Café.
"Whenever God tells you to do something, you don't have to question it. You don't have to second guess it," said Domenick Epps, co-owner of the café.
Epps and his business partner, Danita Hayes, took the step to open Wall Street Café at the pandemic's peak in October 2020. They said it was only possible with the help of God.
For these two business owners, giving help is their goal 24/7.
"We're here for the community," Hayes said. "We're here to teach the community about financial literacy, entrepreneurship, real estate. Just coming together as a community learning and earning together."
The team's goal is to educate each person who walks through the door on stocks, financial aid and history. They do it all while serving up some fantastic food and coffee.
"Our coffee is better than any -- I don't, you can name it, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Wawa -- I'm calling everybody out, our coffee is the greatest right?" Epps laughed.
We can confirm, the coffee is pretty great, and they have many options. They even have a play on words with their sizes. For a 24 ounce cup, instead of a large, you call out an SMP; a small is named a DOW.
So, order your coffee and stick around to catch some Bloomberg channels.
The food is stellar too! They have chicken and waffles, and delicious wings, but their club sandwich is a fan favorite. It was a 13News Now favorite, too: good to the last bite.
When you step inside the restaurant, your eye goes to one thing: "The wall, the wall," Epps and Hayes said in unison.
There's a wall covered in history and faces that they describe as "game-changers" in the business world. The wall even has their faces on it, as a reminder that they are now a part of history.
"So when people think about Wall Street, they immediately think about New York City, the New York stock exchange, which is great because we teach that too, we teach Forex, we teach stocks. But we want to bridge both, so people can have the full understanding of what took place in the Black community as well," Epps nodded, looking around the room.
Here you'll see pieces of Black Wall Street that make you stop and take your mind out of the city. But, even as you walk in, they want you to remember.
"As soon as you come up to the door, it says 'Never forget Greenwood,'" Epps said. "The Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was one of a very amazing Black Wall Street. It was a place where businesses were thriving."
Then, in the summer of 1921, Greenwood was attacked. The Tusla Race Massacre stood etched in history. A mob of white residents marched in, and killed hundreds of black residents. Buildings, churches, schools and businesses were burned and destroyed.
Epps and Hayes try to keep the memory of those residents alive and tell the story, not to relive the massacre, but to educate.
"We don't focus on the massacre of what happened. We focus on what those people were able to do as a community when they came together," said Hayes.
In the worst of times, the residents came together to help build a better future for others. As a child, Epps said that type of future seemed far-fetched.
"The buildings right across the street from here, I remember as a kid, as Blacks, we only went through the back door. Because that is where Blacks were used to entering those businesses; they couldn't go through the front door," he said. "Now, I'm 30-something years old. So, this was in the '80s. The '80s, and we were still doing that."
Then, he smiled.
"For me to know that we own this building... to say, 'Hey, we have a part of history, that we are now a part of what has been here for years that has kept us out of business and out of the marketplace,'" he said. "We here now, and we're not going anywhere."
If you want to visit Wall Street Café, you can go to 118 West Washington Street in Suffolk.