A cup of coffee, a holistic tea, a muffin, and a newspaper, then a dash to catch the train to downtown. That’s the rhythm around the new House of Seven Café set up in a kiosk outside Shawmut Station as owner Tamicka Brown serves commuters and neighbors in a throwback to the days of newsstands and coffee carts.

The kiosk sits on land owned by the Epiphany School, which fully supports her venture, but faces the piazza and main entrance of the Shawmut Station. After opening on Mon., Feb. 26, Brown’s small corner of the city is generating excitement from those who have come upon it.

“Here we are now more than a week later, and so far, it’s been such an amazing response from the community, the commuters, the schools, and the students from the schools,” she said. “It’s a breath of fresh air to just get started…It’s definitely a throwback, something you would have seen in the past. But it’s well-received today too.”

Originally used to store and distribute free food to the community during Covid-19 shutdowns, then used as a home for the Winter Farmer’s Market in 2022, the kiosk was slated to be torn down and thrown away this year until Cynthia Loesch-Johnson, chair of the Codman Square Neighborhood Council (CSNC) and a coordinator of the Codman Square Farmer’s Market, began brainstorming with Brown, who was the coffee purveyor at the Farmer’s Market. Soon enough, the two of them began to ask – why not the kiosk?

“My family is from Dorchester and I kept the dream here in Dorchester,” she said. “I thought I’d have to leave the state to do it, but that didn’t end up being the case. I think this is a great start. Being a mobile barista at farmer’s markets was a good setup for me to land in this kiosk, and I think it will be a good setup for future opportunities…I love it.”

And so far, neighbors have come to love it as well. Already, she has regulars who take time out on their way to the train. Several curious passers-by stop in confusion, though teachers and students at three area schools have been early adopters of the business, as are neighbors working from home who need an outdoor break.

Brown said her family has lived nearby in the West of Washington neighborhood along Spencer Street for more than 50 years. While she moved around and lived in Michigan and Colorado and went to college in Detroit at Wayne State University, she made her way back to the neighborhood more than a decade ago.

While living in Mattapan 11 years ago, she applied for a barista job at the Starbucks in Brookline’s Chestnut Hill section. She immediately took to it and discovered making coffee in that fashion was her calling. “I am a barista at heart; that’s who I am,” she said with a laugh.

After having her son in 2017, she took a leave from Starbucks to focus on raising him, and then changed gears and went to work at Boston Children’s Hospital. However, she never shook the dream of being a barista in her own café.

After starting a cheesecake baking company out of Dorchester’s Commonwealth Kitchen during the pandemic, she was pulled back into the coffee life last year, launching House of Seven on July 7, 2023 (hint: 2 + 0 + 2 + 3 = 7).

“I always thought I would go to Washington, D.C., and have a coffee truck, but that didn’t happen,” she said. “This year I decided to focus on my café dreams. So many things delayed that dream, and I thought now was the time.”

At her kiosk, Brown sells traditional coffee, but also promotes her holistic teas, homemade baked goods, sandwiches, and soon, her cheesecakes. Her signature beverage is a medicinal mushroom coffee – an alternative to coffee that uses functional mushrooms that are healthy, but the drink doesn’t taste like mushrooms. The drink is gut-friendly and is made with a non-dairy alternative, like almond milk.

“One of my customers was won over to it and said it tasted like a unicorn waffle,” she said with a chuckle. “Now I don’t know what that means, but it did sound like a delicious drink. However, I call it Divine Ryzing and it’s the number one favorite here.”
The House of Seven Café kiosk is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Shawmut Station, and accepts all forms of payment. Brown intends to add bistro seating on the side in the spring.