Business owner creating a space for ‘Ritual’ at Stittsville coffee shop

CTV’s Kimberley Johnson speaks with an Ottawa café owner who is working to create an open space for her customers.

February is Black History Month and CTV News Ottawa is working to feature Black voices and businesses that are spread across our city.

At Ritual on Main in Stittsville, the afternoon coffee rush is something owner Chinelo Houron lives for.

“My success is when I leave here, I’m exhausted, my back is broken,” she says. “And I’m like, ‘let’s do it again tomorrow!’”

That search for a rush is why she opened the coffee shop four years ago. It sells everything from specialty coffees and baked goods to sandwiches and cocktails.

Houron says she left a previous career in corporate marketing behind to open her own coffee shop eight years ago.

“I’m very fortunate to work with amazing people, with my friends,” she says. “And I’m just very fortunate to have a business that people want to support.”

But she says it hasn’t always been easy. This is her third location.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of one and the other was partly due to some of the barriers and challenges she says she’s experienced as a woman of colour.

“Acceptance is definitely one,” she says in an interview with CTV News Ottawa when asked what those barriers are. “Especially I found this was a bit more prevalent at my first coffee shop. So, that was my sort of entry into the small business world and entrepreneurship and, you know, just being women of color at the time.”

Finding a community here, she works to support and mentor other women of colour.

• RELATED: Celebration event marks beginning of Black History Month in Ottawa

“It’s been amazing,” she says. “Over the years, I’ve had people ask to sit down and say, ‘give me tidbits. I want to open my own coffee shop. What do you do?’ And I’m happy to do it. I’m so happy to sit down because I wish somebody had done that for me.”

Regulars like Julie Treitz say they keep coming back because Houron brings something special to the community.

“I love what it brings to Stittsville. It’s a little bit of the old and the new,” she says. “It feels a little bit like the coffee shop from Friends. A lot of people that I’ve said come and check it out have loved it and come now as well.”

Houron says she hopes others find their Ritual in the shop.

“I guess that’s why I chose the name ‘Ritual.’ Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a coffee or tea drinker or, you know, you just want to hold space with other people and sit down and people watch, there’s a certain ritual that everybody has every day, no matter what that is.”

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