DETROIT – He's a roofer by trade, but A.J. O'Neil had an unfortunate accident that forced him into a new adventure.
"I opened up a cafe in Ferndale and quickly found out that roofing was easy compared to that," said O'Neil.
To jump-start his new business, O'Neil began an open mic night that successfully brought attention to Detroit's can-do attitude during the city's most challenging time. He even set a Guinness World Record.
"We had the world's longest concert there called the Assembly Line Concert," O'Neil said.
"How long was that concert?" asked Mitch Albom.
"Three-hundred-sixty nonstop hours," said O'Neil.
"Fifteen days," Albom said.
"We did that through really good coffee because the backbone of how we were able to stay up for all those hours was through our coffee so we thought, 'Let's sell the coffee,'" O'Neil said. "Detroit Bold was the perfect name for a coffee."
Detroit Bold Coffee was born in Highland Park. The coffee carries the bold attitude that is synonymous with Detroit and now O'Neil is on a quest to sell 1 million bags of coffee.
Profits from his Million Bag March will be used to give back to communities all across the city.
"We want to build community cafes, train people in the community how to run a small business, how to run a cafe and then actually give them to the community," O'Neil said. "We're a bunch of hard-working people that really do care about our community."
First a roofer, then a record holder and now a coffee humanitarian, O'Neil is brewing a bold idea in the heart of Detroit.
Heart of Detroit