Homecourt Collective Aims to Build Community, One Cup at a Time

If you drop into Miyagi Records on East Garfield Boulevard, you’ll be greeted by rows of record crates. Tucked in the back, you’ll find Homecourt Collective, a pop-up coffee shop that opened at Miyagi this past January. As Miyagi’s current coffee residents, co-founders Melissa Del Carmen and Alex Myung brought Homecourt Collective to Washington Park as a means to share the goodness coffee has given them with the world.

Having day jobs as a filmmaker and mental health therapist, respectively, Myung and Del Carmen wanted a project that they could work on together and enjoy without pressure. That thing happened to be coffee.

The beverage holds personal importance for both of them. Del Carmen said her father has introduced her to a variety of coffee beans and brews, and she found an affinity for the conversation that coffee opens between two people. Myung, as a filmmaker, said coffee shops gave him a place to create and work, do bills, journal, and get counsel.

“Coffee shops and coffee in general were a safe space for us,” Del Carmen said. “When we kept doing it, we were thinking, like ‘How do we share this with other people?’ and also give the message that you can try things. We always kept taking the next step to what it would look like to share our coffee and sell coffee beans.”

The two started Homecourt Collective in 2023 with a series of pop-ups at places like Navy Pier and Avondale Music Hall, which allowed them to explore different seasonal drinks and menu items from ube lattes to espresso mules. In summer 2024, the two hosted a pop-up at Young Chicago Authors, where they offered free drip coffee to everyone who dropped in. But it wasn’t until late last year, when they heard Miyagi Records was seeking a new coffee resident, that Myung and Del Carmen found a long-term home for Homecourt.

“We did a cold call and just pitched ourselves to them. The second we called them, we got a response, and the energy was awesome,” Myung said. It “was contagious and gave us the confidence—like, let’s create something we could be proud of and build community through too.”

Miyagi and Homecourt were perfectly matched. Both the shop and coffee residency fell in line with their missions to function as a space for community members to connect and convene.

“From the first day we walked in, we realized how hard folks ride for their neighborhood here. For them to welcome us and have us be a part of the community is a huge blessing,” Myung said.

Del Carmen and Myung are open to the possibilities of how their coffee residency could grow into something more.

“We are very open to what the future could hold. We have big dreams [about] where Homecourt Collective could go. Perhaps, possibly one day, it would be a huge blessing to have our brick-and-mortar,” Del Carmen said. “We’re kind of like step-by-step and grateful where we are. So whatever the pace looks like, we’re open to it.”