HIGHLAND PARK, MI – You could say that AJ O’Neil, the guy chosen to supply coffee for this week’s Democratic debates, is a pretty bold kind of guy. When he was a 10-year-old kid, he and his brother were trying to sell candy to support their baseball team. Nobody was buying. So little AJ plunged into a corner bar, told the guys on the stools they ought to buy some candy to keep their wives and girlfriends happy, and sold out in minutes.
“That’s how I learned all I know about business,” he said
Later, when he was working as a roofer in 2004, fighting to stay sober, he slipped, fell 25 feet, bounced off a truck, and lost a kidney.
After a few weeks in the ICU, he came out, dusted himself off, and opened AJ’s Café in newly fashionable Ferndale. In between serving sandwiches, he experimented with blending coffee.
Finally, he hit on the right blend and named it Detroit Bold – which he calls “awesome-style coffee for hard-working humans everywhere,” and, like a true Detroiter, hustled like mad to try and get someone to process and package it. He went to Nick Becharas, whose family has been in the coffee business in gritty Highland Park, a rough enclave city within Detroit, since 1914.
“Look at this guy,” Becharas laughed. AJ, last week as always, was wearing a none-too-clean T-shirt and about three days growth of beard. “I send a salesman in a coat and tie, and he’s lucky if he gets an order. AJ goes out and sells a truckload.”
He did indeed. He talked major grocery chains like Meijer and Kroger to carry his brand on their shelves in Metropolitan Detroit.
A few weeks ago, CNN, sponsor of the Democratic presidential contender debates in Detroit earlier this week, contacted AJ to see if Detroit Bold would be willing to supply coffee to the national press corps covering the events. “You bet we would!” said AJ.
He knows something about politics, and gate-crashing. Eleven years ago, he was down in Key West and read Plain Speaking, Merle Miller’s autobiography of Harry Truman. “I liked it, and thought Barack Obama should read it,” O’Neil said.
So he bought a copy and went to give it to Obama, then campaigning for the Democratic nomination. “I freaked the Secret Service out a little bit,” he said, but eventually talked his way into giving the book to the candidate.
Soon-to-be President Obama wrote him a thank you letter. “I’m reluctant to say that someone is the most unusual fellow around, let alone unique, but AJ will do until someone else comes along,” said Bill Haney, an author and publisher who has known him for years.
Unique, perhaps – but also a quintessential Detroiter. There’s a popular T-shirt slogan in the Motor City these days; “Detroit hustles harder.” That could have been written for O’Neil.
His café, which he closed after five years, wasn’t known for its food. But he was briefly in the Guinness book of world records after holding a marathon Danny Boy singing contest and a series of “Assembly Line Concerts” to benefit laid-off auto workers.
Now almost 57, he’s beaten alcoholism (15 years sober) an accident that could have killed him and a local economy that isn’t exactly friendly to boutique or niche products, to create a coffee company that is selling, he says, a ton of beans a week.
His business is steadily growing, in part because of his force-of-nature enthusiasm. He tours supermarkets, poses for pictures, is a constant presence on Facebook. Every Saturday morning, just before dawn breaks, AJ posts a photo from Eastern Market, where Detroiters have bought produce for more than a century.
“Wake up,” he tells Detroit, and then spends the rest of the day holding court and selling coffee, by the cup or the bag; or iced, in the hot days of July and August. (His dark roast is, in my opinion, as good as Starbucks, though slightly more expensive.)
But his motive isn’t getting rich. He lives with his two dogs in Hazel Park, the most modest of blue-collar suburbs, in the home where he nursed his mother till she died a few years ago.
He operates his business and employs four people in Highland Park, a city so run-down and gritty Detroit rejected attempts to merge it with the Motor City. For an office, he often operates out of Red Hots Coney Island, a restaurant little changed since it was established in 1921 to serve workers making Model T Ford cars a few blocks away.
AJ does admit he would love to have a winter place some day in Key West. But that’s not how he spends his money. “He not only talks the talk but walks the walk,” said Becharas. Twice a month, Detroit Bold sets up shop and provides coffee free to homeless people.
“When a hurricane struck the Florida Keys,” Haney remembered, “AJ shifted into high gear and drove his truck a couple thousand miles to serve up free coffee to those affected by it, the victims and the rescue workers.”
More recently, he started a Detroit Bold Foundation, and happily gave $500 to somebody who wanted to start a rival coffee shop. For the local bean czar, it is simple.
“This is my neighborhood,” AJ said, meaning the entire Detroit area. “I believe in expanding your neighborhood, and we all have a responsibility to take care of it.
”That’s what I’m doing, one cup at a time.”
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