Sadaat Hossain ’06 owns and manages Michigan’s most telltale café for music and the macabre

Just an hour's drive from Detroit, the Raven Café in Port Huron, Michigan, is a gateway to another world.

Across two floors of cozy seating surrounded by brimming bookshelves and gothic décor, visitors sip coffee and beer while working and socializing. Seven days a week, they order dishes like the Premature Burial Bacon-Ham Melt from an eight-page menu inspired by - and featuring the written works of - Edgar Allan Poe.

Every Friday and Saturday, artists perform live music on an elevated stage accessed by ladder. Behind the building, an exterior deck offers a unique view of the St. Clair River and Canadian shore. Averaging 4.7 stars across 3,482 Google reviews, locals and world travelers alike have lathered the Raven Café with praise like, "This authentic hole-in-the-wall caféhas the most character in a coffee shop I've ever experienced. In my opinion, it's the best all-around coffee shop in the world."

Sadaat Hossain, who grew up in Port Huron, has owned the Raven Café since 2014. He has worked there since 2008, after returning home from living in Detroit while earning his B.A. in music (technology) at Wayne State University.

Hossain's sister had been a student there while he was an upperclassman in high school. After visiting her, he "fell in love with the Cass Corridor" and decided to go downstate to pursue his degree.

"The music program is so ingrained into the Detroit sound," Hossain said. "You have Motown, techno, garage rock and so on. Detroit's such a cultural epicenter for music, and really a melting pot."

Hossain shadowed Professor Thomas Court, then-director of the music program, who instilled invaluable lessons in students as they managed the recording process at student performances held every Friday in Old Main.

"We carefully recorded and archived the weekly concerts, marking individual performances so everything would always be there in case someone needed to access a certain part of them," Hossain said.

Through these experiences, Hossain started to reconsider his career path.

"My time at Wayne State was very educational and eye-opening, even as I realized that a career fully in concerts and sound production wasn't for me," Hossain said. "My internships gave me an idea of what it was really like to work in the sound industry and at the same time, I also fell in love with the service industry."

"While I was a student, I started working at local restaurants and venues and felt a sense of happiness and calm while cooking, bartending and serving," he added.

In 2008, Hossain returned to Port Huron to care for his ailing parents and joined the Raven as a bartender. By 2010, Hossain was promoted to manager and put in charge of booking musical acts, a task that put his music education into practice.

"I love the knowledge that I got at Wayne State and will always have with me… it's really useful here for mixing the live music and knowing how to run a soundboard and set up a band," Hossain said. "Nowadays at the Raven, I try to give every bartender, who is basically the sound guy on duty, a crash course on how to run soundboard and get the levels right and everything."

Hossain purchased the Raven Café from Gerald Edson in 2014. A Port Huron attorney and Poe devotee, Edson opened the café in 2000 after renovating the building to be like East Coast coffeehouses he enjoyed during his days at Harvard.

Hossain established a new approach to booking musical acts.

"I tried to book more diverse acts instead of the same stable six or seven solo acoustic acts so that there's a bit more of an eclectic feel to it, not just singer-songwriter, but DJs, bluegrass, blues, cabaret."

Another focus has been refining the menu.

"I'm trying to whittle down the menu because we originally had a seven-page food menu and five-page drink menu, and that was a lot to manage, but you don't want to alienate the people who come here specifically for a certain item," Hossain said.

The responsibilities and duties of conducting a café are immense, but you don't need a business degree to be a management maestro, Hossain said.

"The best way to do it is to just live it, really. I mean, the reason why my partner Jennifer and I are so in tune with the culture that we've built is that we've worked in food service since we were quite young and have 50 years of experience between us," Hossain said. "We've been in every position, seen a lot of scenarios, and know what to expect."

"But at the same time, you can't ever be truly ready for anything," he added.

By Steve Zoski

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