On Tuesday afternoon, Starbucks will close 8,000 stores so its 175,000 employees can receive four hours of racial sensitivity training. The training is a response to an April incident where two black men in Philadelphia were arrested on suspicion of trespassing at a Starbucks after a barista called police to say the men, seated at a table waiting for a colleague, refused to leave.

After Starbucks reopens its doors Wednesday, Keba Konte, the owner of Red Bay Coffee, an Oakland coffee roaster and store, wants the conversation on diversity in the coffee industry to continue.

Konte sees the troubles at Starbucks as an opportunity for him to promote diversity and inclusion in an industry where, he says, black and brown people have been underrepresented.

That’s why he’s traveling to Philadelphia for a Tuesday morning roundtable conversation on retail racism at Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse, a black-owned business. And then there’s this: Konte told me Red Bay plans to open a store in Philadelphia this summer.

“It’s an opportunity to put us in the center of the conversation, which is where we should be, because we are a mission-driven coffee company,” he told me. “This is something I can do something about in my industry.

“It matters giving young black people an opportunity to see themselves in other professions that they might not know, and letting them know that coffee came from Africa. It’s your cultural inheritance.”

Coffee is a global industry, but thanks in part to Starbucks, when we think of coffee, we think of white hipsters in Seattle, San Francisco and New York buying expensive java in sizes listed as grande and venti.

Starbucks revolutionized the way coffee is consumed, as the corner coffee shop has become a place to work, and a meeting place for everything from weekend hangouts to job interviews.

I’m not a regular coffee drinker, so I’m not familiar with the latest brews and blends. And until last week, I didn’t know that the coffee plant is indigenous to Ethiopia, a country in the Horn of Africa. The plant was exported from Africa to coffee-producing countries.

According to the International Coffee Organization, of the top 10 coffee-producing countries in 2017, seven were in Africa or South America. Brazil was the top producer in the world, and Ethiopia ranked fifth.

Konte said a majority of the black and brown people in the coffee business work at the coffee farms, doing the heavy lifting for the least amount of money. And there’s a dearth of black and brown people in the industry’s money-making roles of importing, exporting, roasting and distribution, according to Konte.

Founded in 2013, Red Bay Coffee is one of the few black roasters in the country.

For Konte, this moment is bigger than Starbucks and customer service. For him, the moment is really about establishing and securing black and brown ownership in the coffee business.

“It’s a $50 billion industry, just in the U.S., and we play a very small role in that,” Konte said. “I want black people to understand that, and to reclaim that.”

Konte has been in the coffee business for 13 years. A visual artist, he co-founded Guerilla Cafe in North Berkeley so he could have a gallery to exhibit his art.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be great to showcase my artwork,’” he said.

Now he wants Red Bay to showcase what inclusiveness looks like in the coffee industry.

Red Bay makes it a priority to have women and people of color represented on its staff, and the company hires and trains formerly incarcerated people. At the company’s headquarters in the Fruitvale neighborhood, Red Bay teaches its roasting techniques to companies run by people of color, and there’s a weekly pop-up brunch series featuring food prepared by chefs of color.

Konte wants to bring the outreach model he’s honed in Oakland to other cities, including Philadelphia.

Last week, I interviewed Konte next to the converted shipping container on Broadway that includes a Red Bay coffee shop. Old soul hits were playing from speakers as people spending the day at the next door co-working space Impact Hub came to purchase coffee drinks.

We discussed the recently released video of Sterling Brown, a basketball player for the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, being arrested and tased by Milwaukee police officers. It was the latest in the seemingly weekly stream of videos of black people being harassed by police officers for minor offenses.

Like the video of the two black men who were arrested at Starbucks, it was widely shared and discussed on social media.

“It’s easy to become numb watching these videos,” Konte said.

Still, like me, he feels obligated to watch them as we search for something to do about what we see. His solution is to keep talking, preferably over a cup of coffee.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr