Creighton Davis was walking past a vacant storefront in Uptown Oakland when it hit him. He thought about his father, who used to point at people on the street and say: "That's our kinfolk."
He called his friends Nicole Reyes and Akintunde Ahmad — a journalist and third-generation Oaklander — and they asked a question that wouldn't leave them alone: how do you maintain what Oakland was? How do you keep the soul of a neighborhood alive when the city is changing so fast?
The answer they landed on was simple. You restore the gathering places.
They signed the lease on 1951 Telegraph Avenue in Uptown Oakland and called in Oakland interior designer Ashley Williams. She transformed the space into something that feels like it exhales when you walk in — blue velvet sofas, burnt orange barrel chairs, copper stools, and floor-to-ceiling windows that fill the room with golden hour light every afternoon.
Then they opened the doors on November 4, 2022. And Oakland exhaled.
Kinfolx is not a brand. It's a platform. A platform for people to share their gifts and talents with each other. For creatives to start their day. For neighbors to end theirs. For art to live on the walls. For wine to flow at night. For community to exist in between.
Four break-ins couldn't close them. The challenges of running an independent small business in a rapidly changing city couldn't quiet them. Because what Kinfolx is building isn't just a coffee shop. It's the kind of space that makes people feel like they belong somewhere.
NAACP Powershift Grant recipient. Featured in Eater SF, ABC7 News, CBS, and the San Francisco Chronicle. 20,000+ neighbors on Instagram. A 4.8-star rating on Yelp with 183 reviews. And still growing.
