A few weeks back, on the sunny November Saturday just before the election, all of Fairmount was still buzzing with the pre-rally energy for Kamala Harris when a text came through my phone from my neighbor, Meghan:

“I’m at Coffee Cream & Dreams, and AOC is here!”

Along with the missive came proof in the form of two photos of the young New York Congresswoman at the five-year-old Fairmount coffee shop. In one, a denim-clad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is sandwiched between the two beaming proprietors, Stephanie Ford and Sonja West; in the other, she’s embracing Ford.

Ford is 54, with twists that fall just below her shoulders and an easy smile. Yes, she says, she had gotten the call from the Congresswoman’s people before AOC arrived, but, “The woman on the phone said the name so fast — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and you know, you never hear the full name — so I didn’t even catch it.” And so then, when she saw who it was alighting from the car, “Well, I geeked out.” So did the customers, in for their Saturday regular orders. (“I wanted to cry!” one said after the Congresswoman left.)

That a Democratic political star would pop up for a before-canvassing coffee the same week the city was inundated with other celebs campaigning for Kamala — DeNiro at the Eagles tailgate! DiCaprio on the Parkway! — wasn’t as surprising, maybe, as the fact that AOC was just the latest in a reasonably long line of civic luminaries to visit the cute little corner cafe.

The previous month, Coffee, Dream & Dreams hosted U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, along with a handful of Temple students, in their coworking space for a round-table meeting. Former state Rep. Donna Bullock is a regular (she likes the hot chocolate), as is Project HOME’s Sister Mary Scullion; they’ve also welcomed a deputy mayor, and, many times over, Mayor Cherelle Parker, who has also brought with her at various points former Council Pres. Darrell Clarke and Councilmember Curtis Jones, former Mayor Nutter and School District Superintendent Tony Watlington. “We know when we see the black Jeeps pull up, it’s the mayor,” Ford says.

This is essentially what Meghan noted that day, in her text — that it was old news among her civically-minded friends that political sightings at CC&D were de rigueur, that this cute little hang regulars know for its beignets and white chocolate hazelnut latte was also gaining a rep as a new, somewhat unexpected draw for Philly politicos.

“The type of business you just want to be in community with.”

If you’re the sort of Philadelphian who follows such things, then you likely know that the city has a handful of these spots already, well-known non-political political hubs: Famous Fourth Street Deli on Election Day, for one; the erstwhile Relish, for another; the Ritz; South on North Broad Street; Capital Grille across the street from City Hall.

Unlike most of these places, though, CC&D has neither the history nor an owner with political ties nor an address that necessarily makes it a natural draw for movers and shakers. The locale of the sun-drenched, cheerful two-floor cafe (downstairs is a co-working and meeting space) might even be easy to miss if you don’t happen to live nearby. It’s on the far eastern edge of Fairmount, three-quarters of a mile south of Temple, a mile north of City Hall, a block off Broad Street.

And neither Ford nor West — who live on East Oak Lane and in Lansdowne, respectively — had ever even run a coffee shop, or any business, before they opened Coffee Cream & Dreams in 2019, nor have they any real connections with politics. (Well, until now.)

 “It’s a whole vibe.” — the writer’s friend Meghan

Truth is, that the place is even open today is rather remarkable, given that they debuted in 2019, five months before the world shut down for Covid. In fact, that they even got that far was seemingly unlikely, if only because lots of people (well, people I know at least) seem to harbor daydreams of opening a cute little neighborhood coffee shop, or bookstore, or cheese shop, or some other highly romanticized Hallmark-movie-esque retail endeavor — but comparatively few actually do it. (And more than half of these places reportedly don’t see five years, as CC&D has just managed to do.)

Ford, for her part, had been mulling the possibility of opening a cafe for years. A longtime legal assistant at Pepper Hamilton, she spent years visiting other cafes around the city, half-daydreaming and half-planning, getting ideas. In 2016, the name of her future shop hit her; she wrote it down in her Notes app. In 2018, Pepper Hamilton offered voluntary layoffs, and Ford decided to take her shot, leaving her 30-year career to start her next chapter. That very day, she texted a group of friends on a group chat. The message was essentially: Coffee Cream & Dreams. How about it?

West, who is 57 and wears thick, dark-rimmed glasses and large gold hoops in her ears, wrote back to her: Call me. The two had known each other for some time, having met as members of the running group Black Girls Run. (These days, they’ve swapped running for biking — something they chatted about with Nutter when he was in for coffee; Philly’s former first lady, Lisa Nutter, too, is a cyclist.) West says that after working for decades as a tech for Verizon, “I was ready for a change.”

And so they went for it. Over the course of the next nine months, the women figured out everything from scratch, from the business plan to finding a location to L&I and health department permitting. “I know a good cup of coffee,” Ford says, “but really had no knowledge about how to run a coffee shop. So yeah, we had to figure it out.”

They did, and then, five months after opening, a global pandemic shuttered businesses much longer-running than theirs. Quickly, they pivoted in order to survive, becoming one of the first places around the neighborhood to go to online ordering, and then ferrying the orders out to their customers on the sidewalk. (Indeed, as another neighborhood pal points out, many CC&D fans are holdovers from those Covid days, where coffee and a treat could easily be the highlight of your day.) And so they kept on, growing the business.

In 2022, the pair upgraded their space, moving across the street to the current location, which is big enough that it’s become a draw for community groups who rent out the space for events. There’s an expansive first floor with walls of windows, exposed brick, a cheery hand-written chalk menu, a pastry case, a few cozy armchairs and scattered wooden tables. Downstairs is the co-working space and meeting room (they offer both day passes and membership plans for interested parties); this is where Cordona and AOC and Parker have held their meetings.

It is an exceedingly friendly spot: Everyone who walks in gets a warm hello. The two women (and for the most part, it is just them there, save the occasional part-time help from young people they hire or friends who cover the shop in a pinch) know regular customers — and their kids — by name, as well as their drinks. They keep Cheerios behind the counter for a young favorite customer who always requests them. They welcome dogs (outside only) with treats; they host toy drives and poetry slams and musicians and Juneteenth pop-up shops; their social media presence is cheery, filled with smiling customers and coffee memes. “Everyone is so pleasant!” one online reviewer bubbled.

Of course they are, Ford says: That’s the business, isn’t it? And they love it, both of them. Ford will tell you that — even at 6am on a Saturday — it doesn’t feel like work to her. West says: “It’s exciting just to be able to serve and give folks what they want, because they want coffee. They come in for coffee. You don’t have to convince or try to draw folks in.”

But of course, they have drawn people in. Including, now, the heavy hitters.

When I ask them if there were a political figure they’d be most excited to see walk into their shop, both women had the same answer: Michelle Obama.

Ford says — clearly delighted — that’s thanks to your run-of-the-mill word of mouth about a local coffee shop that’s simply garnered some fans. She thinks Mayor Parker’s first visit was for a meeting for women during the mayoral election. (“And I think now it’s just a quiet place she can pop up with no fanfare.”) When an organization (“I can’t remember which”) reached out about Secretary Cardona’s visit, they told her that they had heard about the place, read nice reviews (4.9 out of 5 stars on Yelp, for the record), and came to tour the space.

“I think if some of the political spaces in Philly are established by virtue of being accustomed to high-end clientele, by being close or being discreet, then others happen really organically,” Meghan offers. “And that’s this place, the perfect city coffee shop, the sort of cafe that makes you feel charmed by the neighborhood, and the type of business — and, really, the people — you just want to be in community with. I think it’s a whole vibe.”

Speaking of which, I ask Ford: What if, in these politically fraught and fractious times, it wasn’t high-powered Democrats popping into the Black-women-owned shop, but Republicans? Would this be a … welcome development?

Ford laughs. “They get the same treatment,” she says. Warmth and welcome are, after all, sort of the point of their brand. Besides coffee, she adds. “Unless they’re not nice to me, yeah? But we treat everyone the same.” For the election, they put a sign in the window — it said, simply, “VOTE.” Same with the t-shirts they sold in the shop, as well. “We try to kind of stay in the middle; let people choose who they choose.”

But that doesn’t mean they don’t have favorites. When I ask them, separately, if there were a political figure they’d be most excited to see walk into their shop, both women had the same answer: Michelle Obama. A dream that, at this rate, seems perfectly plausible.

MORE LOCAL BUSINESSES WE LOVE