A black man walks into a coffee shop. He asks the barista how much a hot chocolate will cost. When she answers, he shakes his head, mutters about the exorbitance of it all, and walks out.

"I'm so glad you were sitting here to see that," said Terra Jones, owner of Amani International Coffeehouse & Cafe, open 10 months now in the North Side's re-branded Deutschtown neighborhood. "A friend of mine says that I'm way too expensive. But you don't go to Wendy's and say Wendy's is too expensive, after you've left there and spent $6.79 on a meal. ... You take East Ohio Street, and boy, you can't keep people out of those bars."

It's an interesting business phenomenon -- why aren't there many nouveau coffee shops in African-American neighborhoods?

And what happens when you try to open one there?

Bars, cafes, haberdasheries, barber shops, dry cleaners and jewelers seem to be doing just fine along the well-trafficked East Ohio Street, which cuts through the heart of Deutschtown. And sure, there are a few spots where you can get a cup of Joe.

But the modern, ubiquitous, Seattle coffee bar -- the kind with dozens of assortments of lattes, cappuccinos and espressos, one pumps and two pumps and Arabica beans, whip or no whip, sofas and laptops and lounge music playing softly in the background -- can't seem to find a niche in these urban neighborhoods. Not yet, anyway. Not in Pittsburgh. Not the chains like Starbucks, which historically had been reluctant to open in "urban" areas, and not the independent coffee bars, either.

Part of it is no doubt demographic -- neighborhoods with a higher percentage of minorities tend to be poorer neighborhoods, and thus have less disposable income, and presumably are less likely to spend it on a $2, $3 or $4 cup of coffee. The notion is fed by a top-down economic reasoning, an assumption on the part of banks and investors that only suburban yuppies would be interested in designer coffees.

Part of it must be sociological, too. Disadvantaged neighborhoods can be wary of white intrusions. Starbucks shops are a worldwide symbol of gentrification, and coffee bars like them speak the same language -- when gentrification comes, rental prices go up, driving out stalwarts who believed in the neighborhood and stuck with it during hard times.

And part of it might be the unease that comes with novelty.

"They've never been exposed to a coffee shop," said Ms. Jones, 31. "Then when you bring a Starbucks to these affluent communities, the people in the disadvantaged communities, all they can do is look and see. And what they see is that this is put into a white neighborhood -- so perhaps we're not welcome."

Ms. Jones, who is black, has been welcomed, -- by her white neighbors. She says she can count on five fingers black neighbors who have become daily customers, not counting friends. (Meanwhile, the Census tracts surrounding East Ohio Street are between 25 and 49 percent black.) Normally, "black people love to support black business." But coffee bars -- in fact, most businesses -- usually aren't owned by young black women. "They don't know who owns this place," she sighed.

Seeking advice

Demographics, median income, aggregate income per square mile, the needs of a community -- the textbooks tell you to consider all of these things when opening a business.

But sometimes you have to throw the book out the window when you're dedicated to a specific neighborhood. And Ms. Jones, whose coffee shop is the realization of her goal to open a business -- any business -- by age 30, is committed to the North Side (she lives in Deutschtown, too, with her 9-year-old son). She knew, by 2005, that she wanted to open a coffee shop. And she knew early on what to call it -- Amani, which means "peace" in Swahili.

What she didn't know was how to go about it, or even anything about coffee necessarily.

That's where her lender and supplier have proved invaluable.

Her supplier is Ed Wethli, owner of the Kiva Han coffee wholesaler. He helped Ms. Jones in those early trial-and-error months, when she had no idea how much inventory to stock. "Any time you get into business, it's difficult. You really need some guidance, somebody to talk to, somebody to lead you through," Mr. Wethli said.

The Northside Community Development Fund, which provides financing and development services to its community, is her financier. For years, they'd been trying to recruit a more upscale coffee bar to the East Ohio Street business district, to no avail.

"In community surveys, that's always one of the thing that has been identified," said Mark Masterson, director of the development fund. They helped Ms. Jones, who has a degree in administration of justice from the University of Pittsburgh, navigate the financial side of running a business. Initially, they looked at storefront space on East Ohio Street, which runs about $10 a square foot. When that proved unworkable, she moved to a side street, a former Foreland Street pizza shop, where rent is 10 percent lower.

But the drop in rent corresponded with a drop in visibility for Amani. That's when Ms. Jones learned that in business, as in real estate, location is everything. If the business gods were to grant her a mulligan, "I probably would not have opened my doors, if I had to be back here," she said. She would have waited a little longer to open, haggled with her lender and held out for East Ohio Street. "You ride past here, and you don't know that it's a coffee shop."

Normally, that's where advertising comes in, but Ms. Jones, like many newbie entrepreneurs, doesn't have the money for that. And she's finding that there's more to an ad campaign than papering windshields with buy-one-get-one-free coupons: She distributed 1,200 such coupons.

Twenty-four were redeemed.

Why the low response? The Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project and Pittsburgh Magazine named Ms. Jones to their annual "40 Under 40" list, a roster of young Pittsburghers who are remaking the city. The New Pittsburgh Courier, a black paper, did a story about her, too. So it's not that people aren't finding out about the place.

It's that her neighbors aren't the ones who are finding out. The Internet makes it easy these days to connect with business groups (The Northside Northshore Chamber of Commerce meets there monthly), to set up a MySpace business profile or a Web site (she's done both). But getting in touch with people around the corner is more time-consuming.

"I think it's more difficult to connect with the neighborhood, only because you really have to get on foot, and drop fliers off at every door, three days a week," Ms. Jones said.

And who feels like doing that after working from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday?

Change is gonna come?

There is no doubt, at least among her lender, her supplier and herself, that Ms. Jones has the hustle and spirit to run a business. And there's no doubt she's created a lovely coffee shop -- hip without being glossy, vintage-chic without being conspicuously so. It's not just a place where 9-to-5ers get their morning lattes and writers peck away at their manuscripts -- Amani wants to host poetry readings, jazz nights, neighborhood meetings, yoga, aerobics sessions.

But will any of that sell coffee, smoothies or sandwiches?

In the end, it's still about her neighborhood, and whether it will support a coffee shop. The North Side community surveys suggested that the neighborhood wanted its own coffee shop, but sometimes there can be a disconnect between what a community says it wants and what it will actually use. A Northside Leadership Conference study showed that "less than a third of the folks living in the neighborhood even use the retail in the neighborhood," Mr. Masterson said.

So either the East Ohio Street corridor has the wrong mix of retail, or, more ominously, the people in the neighborhood itself would rather shop, drink and eat elsewhere.

But Ms. Jones has survived almost a full year, and she's made in through the slow summer months, both good signs. And it helps that she decided to open a coffee bar instead of a restaurant. Just a few years ago, said Mr. Wethli, the success rate of a new, independent coffee shop was 50-50 -- half would close within three years of opening. "Now maybe it's 90-10," he said.

Mr. Wethli also believes that people like Ms. Jones are finally making inroads into urban neighborhoods. They've been aided, in some respects, by their corporate competitors. Starbucks and basketball legend Magic Johnson cracked open the door nearly a decade ago, when they began experimenting with inner-city coffee shops in Harlem and elsewhere. If Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts could thrive in a black neighborhood, why couldn't a coffee shop, someday?

"It is changing," Mr. Wethli said. "And it will change in those minority neighborhoods."

Ms. Jones is doing her part, playing the role of java missionary, knocking down one wall, one stereotype, at a time. Sometimes, she delivers free drinks to the barbershop next door, crashing into that urban, masculine barbershop ethos with something distinctly yuppified.

"They would have never, ever, ever in a million years thought about going into a Starbucks and asking for a latte," she said. "That's what I'm trying to get out to the neighborhood, to the black community -- that coffee shops are for you."

This is another in an occasional series looking at small business owners, the missteps they made and the lessons they learned. If you want to tell us about what you learned from your mistakes, contact us at business@post-gazette.com.