“We had lines around the corner when we opened for two days straight,” he said about the shop’s launch in 2021. “And some people would be like, ‘There is no way a coffee shop selling $7 lattes will work.’ All right, fast forward and we’ve created 30 jobs. It has gone well.”
He had noticed that the Get Down needed more space, with customers facing long waits for the lone bathroom. They also had to walk across the shop to get there. He wanted to improve the experience for patrons, so when a New York designer showed him renderings of what was possible in the space, he was sold on creating the new restaurant.
“It was undeniable that this was really special and we needed to have more depth to the menu,” he said. “We needed to have more time for more people. But the way the cafe was designed, it was designed the way coffee shops needed to be in 2020, when everybody was hanging out because of the pandemic.”
He compares his journey evolving the Get Down to the run by A Tribe Called Quest, a hip hop crew that had a critically acclaimed run with the release of its first three major albums: People’s Instinctive Travels (1990), the Low End Theory (1991) and Midnight Marauders (1993).
Those albums all showed different and distinct styles, a collection that demonstrated the group’s refusal to conform to expectations from one album to the next. A Tribe Called Quest wasn’t afraid to try new things even though they’d found immediate success, White said.
“‘People’s Instinctive Travels’ is an undeniable classic, but you could see in [A Tribe Called Quest’s] attire, they were searching for themselves. But then ‘Low End Theory,’ it was like, ‘Look, we are who we are.’ And then they released a bona fide, undeniable, mature classic,” he continued. “And so for me, the Get Down is ‘People’s Instinctive Travels,” which was a classic, amazing. But I was finding my way in hospitality in 2020 and then the food business. This next iteration for me is ‘Low End Theory.’ I’m certain of where I’m going.”
The Get Down stood strong after the pandemic and offered a safe space at a turbulent time. Its greatest feat was attracting a diverse pool of folks who enjoyed a brown sugar banana cream latte or a bounce to the ounce mocha.
White said his brand of coffee will still be available through the Get Down’s website and various merchants, including Target. And he believes the new bistro will attract a similarly loyal clientele. He said his strongest customer base for the Get Down has been suburban white women, ages 18 to 50. He said that’s a testament to the commitment from his patrons, a commitment he believes will continue as he steps into a new venture and a new vision.
“I think in this town, we stagnate because we just accept the best of what we have instead of expecting to continue to evolve it,” White said. “If you look at the McDonald’s logo when it first started versus what it is now, they kept changing. You look at any great restaurant, any great technology, you’ve got to keep moving it forward. And I think the thing that holds Minnesota back, especially where Black culture is concerned, is that we confine it. It’s like, ‘That was good. That’s good enough. Leave it alone.’ I don’t believe that.”