A DRINK WITH-KYISHA DAVENPORT
By Maia Merrill Gosselin
Once upon a time, Kyisha Davenport wanted to be a singer. Like many, she got into bartending as a means to pay the bills while pursuing her dream. As so often happens, life had different plans. After learning the ropes bartending in New York, the Brooklyn native decided to move to Boston. She hit the city almost ten years ago and was surprised to find that there were so few people of color, let alone women of color, in the hospitality industry. And Black female bartenders were virtually nonexistent. Kyisha persevered and eventually landed a great gig where her skills and personality earned her a following. But along with her success was a feeling of isolation. The bar industry is famously an inclusive community, but Kyisha was starkly aware of the lack of diversity. A chance moment of inspiration planted an idea to effect change and she ran with it, establishing BarNoirBoston as a way to connect with other Black and Brown people in the hospitality industry.
Today, Kyisha has segued her career as a bartender into a beverage director and consultant, specializing in creating carefully curated beverage programs that convey a deep cultural connection. Through BarNoirBoston, she’s heavily involved in advocacy and championing BIPOC industry workers across the industry from bussers to owners. She’s a one-woman changemaker! I caught up with Kyisha recently for a truly interesting and insightful conversation. She’s impassioned, extremely well-spoken and dedicated. Her enthusiasm is infectious. A one-time aspiring singer, she still uses her voice but in a completely different way. When Kyisha Davenport talks, people listen.
MAIA GOSSELIN You became a professional bartender at a relatively young age. What was the allure of the industry and how did attending bartending school help you?
KYISHA DAVENPORT Growing up, I wanted to be two things: a singer and the president. Once college didn’t pan out, I tried to focus on pursuing a music career. In true millennial fashion, I came across a Craigslist ad for bartending school; I thought, “that sounds like a typical artist’s come up — bartending until fame hits,” and went for it. Once I started, I really fell in love with the ability to learn and create, but probably more importantly, it was my type of vibe — working alongside people from all walks of life who are cool and smart in their own ways, coming together to create . . . bartending has its own kind of academia. In 2009, craft was still new; shots and shooter culture was the wave. I can’t speak for every school, but what the school I went to got right was teaching speed and memorization of some 200-odd drinks that really spanned the range of classics, what was hot, and quite a few offerings that are being riffed into a fashionable resurgence – hey, Jagermeister!
MG You’ve taken the skills you learned behind the bar and moved from there to successful beverage director, consultant, and activist. When did it shift from being a job to a career and a passion?
KD My first full time bar gig was at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in 2012. The arena was — and still is — an unfortunate marker of gentrification. The city employed eminent domain to forcefully remove mostly Black and Brown folks from their homes. Barclays was required to hire a portion of applicants from disadvantaged communities; the very same people being pushed out by this kind of development. Working there was such a wakeup call in that I always knew bartending to be a lucrative career, and yet here we were, in this billion-dollar arena, making sub minimum wages and unable to even qualify for the affordable housing that was supposed to compensate for what was lost when the neighborhood was razed. I have always been the kind of person to say, “It’s not going down like that”. I hit the ground running at that point, working to make sure that Black workers were going to be valued in the food and beverage industry.
MG BarNoirBoston was established several years ago by you to connect with, and champion, Black people in the hospitality industry. Describe how this idea came to you.
KD Perhaps my unfortunate trait is that I am always dreaming of more. It sounds great, but it sometimes means that you miss being grateful for the here and now. In 2018 I was a bartender at Shōjō, a hot spot in Chinatown. Shōjō was the first bar to hire me as a bartender with no reservations in Boston. Anyway, February 2018, the Black Panther soundtrack just dropped. The community was really celebrating its success; we bumped that album nonstop, as loud as possible, every night. I was working a busy shift – the place was rocking. “King’s Dead” was playing; while I’m working, I’m kind of daydreaming, disassociating. I was excited to be at a great bar but feeling lonely. We’re bumping this soundtrack, it’s a good time to be Black, hahaha. But I knew so few other Black bartenders at this time. I didn’t have any community. I was thinking to myself, “what would that community look like?” “King’s Dead” closes out with a Dora Milaje — a black female contingent of warriors — battle cry. As this battle cry pierces the air through the speakers, I hear it: “BarNoirBoston”. It was so clear, startling, in fact . . . I’m looking around the room like, “did y’all hear that?!” I smiled to myself and said, word, that it’s, then. Let’s go.
MG The restaurants where you have tended bar or been the beverage director have all had very thoughtfully curated drinks programs. Where did your interest in the cultural connection between cocktails and cuisine stem from?
KD From my perspective, by the time I got to Boston in 2016, I found that many bars were in the throes of riffing classics, strong brand alignment, with the focus on plugging newer craft brands into classic and contemporary cocktail formulas. Don’t get me wrong — many of these drinks were delicious. But I didn’t feel those drinks were telling me stories. Since I was a child, I loved food because I experienced how it can take you out of, or transmute, a space you’re in, just like books. Once I started bartending, I loved that cocktails could do the same. This energy, on top of not feeling welcomed or seen at these bars, really inspired me to write the story I would want to read, something that I’d learned as a younger creative writer, but in beverage form. Because there were so few Black bartenders on the craft scene, it meant that there were few opportunities to incorporate inspiration from our backgrounds into the beverage programs where we worked. I like to listen to folks in the room before I respond. Feeling like I had heard enough in beverage, I decided it was time to say something.
MG You describe your style of drinks making as “diasporic mixology”. Can you describe the tenets of this?
KD 1. You must be of a diaspora. In my work I primarily focus on the African Diaspora, but there is overlap and connectivity between other people of color and people of non BIPOC diasporas. 2. Your primary cocktail making focus is centered on, or at least incorporates, elements of your respective diaspora and/or is intended to be an expression of solidarity across other diasporas. 3. Your works are intended to archive or restore cultural practice and/or memory lost to displacement.
MG What are some interesting cocktail trends you’re currently seeing? Any particular bars doing fun and interesting things?
KD Sometimes I feel our cocktail trends really reflect the collective psyche. The long drink is in right now. You can’t force relationships, energy or people, but you can damn sure force carbonate your cocktails. I see folks looking for lightness in their lives, and it’s showing up in these bubbly, lower ABV, refreshing drinks. I think — I hope — the bar snack is coming back in some form. A little salty savory something before you order your first round feels so much more inviting, though I get how it can be a hassle to manage at times.
MG Where have you seen the most positive change since you established BarNoirBoston and what areas are you actively working to address?
KD Statistically, we’ve seen incredible growth of Black owned bars and restaurants in Boston. I feel sometimes folks tire of hearing this, but the beverage community really needs to sit with the fact that just a few years ago, there were fewer than ten Black owned spaces that had full liquor licenses in Boston, of 1,400 total in the city. That is what erasure, systemic and structural racism, look like. Just last year the state approved a city liquor license increase that prioritizes neighborhood-restricted access that prevents licenses from being sold out of economically disadvantaged areas; it’s been a half century since the last major increase. With an influx of new businesses that were always on the margins of the beverage side of the industry, there’s a significant learning gap that we’re seeing as our next challenge, ensuring that new bars are well equipped with the knowledge to run successful operations and empowered to bring fresh ideas to the industry, not just going along to get along. My work is to build a formidable Black hospitality community in the city that cultivates the new leaders of the industry worldwide. I could use another Black Panther soundtrack, I think!
MG Role models and leaders are so important in this industry. How have you mentored BIPOC individuals working in the business?
KD Peer mentorship has been invaluable throughout my career. BarNoir started out as an Instagram page that I hoped people would find and follow. Then we could connect in person, and exchange ideas and information. Some of us have lived in larger markets or worked in more advanced bars and restaurants, some of us have learned almost exclusively through self-study. Our levels of access to what programs, scholarships, techniques, places to buy supplies vary so much. The ability to gather and share what we know among each other is in direct resistance to the kind of gatekeeping that unfortunately is a reflection of systemic racism in our greater society. I’m going to hire you, even with less experience, so you can learn. I’m going to send you articles to read. I’m going to write your application recommendations and edit your submissions. I’m speaking your name in interviews, in rooms you haven’t stepped into yet. I’m coming to your events. I’ve put gas in tanks, bought new beds for folks. Therapist referrals. If it truly takes a village, we must move like it. It’s all interconnected.
MG Who are some people who have mentored or inspired you along the way?
KD Early on my Barclays colleagues Doug Cranfield and Alex Camu, both longtime industry veterans, inspired me to lean into the craft of bartending. I’ll never underestimate the power of taking someone out for a damn good martini. Longtime Boston bartender Lexi LaGuerre (now a brand ambassador with High West Whiskey) was the first person who took me under their wing in Boston and showed me the ropes . . . that’s my sister. Marcus Yao led the bar team at Shōjō before my time, but he left an incredible program that I was able to immerse myself in and learn so much. And of course, Josh Davis of Brown and Balanced, I will be forever grateful to him for the extraordinary community he has built for Black bartenders to feel safe enough to shine.
MG There are myriad challenges on all fronts these days from tariffs to a lack of well-trained service professionals. But . . . there are also bright spots. What are some positives for you, things that remind you how much you love this business?
KD The possibilities are the positives. In the last five years, I’ve poured myself into two projects I was deeply devoted to, but ultimately not treated well in either of them. Those kinds of challenges can feel so dark, impossible to see through. And yet, you think to yourself . . . okay, what do you want the next bar to look like? Right now, I’m working with new operators who are running bars for the first time. Watching them learn, talking through the basics and seeing how they light up with new knowledge is powerful. I try to work with them in such a way that they don’t lose sight of that vision, those feelings, even when time and life and business progresses and inevitably tries to alter that vision or devalue those feelings. Creativity is the lifeblood of the industry. So long as we honor and protect it — and the folks who cultivate it — we can withstand just about any of the external challenges in the industry.
I’m also going to shout out my friend Earth here, he’s a bartender at Merai and Mahaniyom in Boston. Earth is moving back home to Thailand to open his own bar, Dryft in Bangkok. Merai held a goodbye party for him and it was literally like going to your class reunion — everybody was there. This is a person who, when I met during opening Mahaniyom in 2020, had virtually no bar experience. But his team and our community believed and supported him so much that, in very Boston fashion, if you name dropped that you even sat at Earth’s bar, you were worth your salt, hahaha. When the bar community gets together to celebrate, to uplift one another, the energy is unmatched.
MG This is an industry with a high turnover rate . . . how do you keep yourself fresh and balanced to avoid burnout?
KD Believe it or not, spending less time “doing” industry . . . you know what I mean? I became an organ donor in 2023, and the process in the year leading up to donation admittedly did the work for me — my standard bartender drinking, that’s what the doctors call binge drinking. I can’t change others, but I surely can change myself, right? So, I spent less time out, being all up in other people’s faces, so that I didn’t feel obligated to take that shot or try your whole new menu — then rinse and repeat that at another bar the next day. Taking more time to prioritize myself in all aspects made the times when I do pull up on friends or try new spots more fulfilling. Shifting my perspective on my own personal value, though an ugly process at times, has changed my relationship to burnout. From my perspective and the space I take up in the industry, I felt pressured into believing my value was determined by how much value I could add to or for others. Because I experienced a lot of bias and isolation coming up in the business — and sadly, this is an experience for Black women in particular in just about any industry — it pushed me to be overly determined to not only prove myself but bring everybody else along with me. That shit is exhausting! Don’t do that!
MG And finally . . . when work is done and you’re preparing your end-of-the-day libation . . . what’s in your glass?
KD These days, I’ll keep a neat pour of rum or mezcal, or an aperitif and soda. If I’m shaking something . . . tell me you’re over 30 without telling me you’re over 30 – anything that I can add my collagen powder to is a go.
