Madison Ritter and James Miller met at theater school in Denver and moved to New York in 2015. Miller spent about seven years in the city's coffee world, at Joe Coffee, Little Collins and Plowshares. They opened Sojourner in April 2022 in the West 116th Street storefront that Shuteye Coffee left in 2020, where they had been regulars. Ritter took the name from the idea of a person on a path, taking a break on the journey.
Hot-air-balloon prints hang on the exposed brick behind the bar, where a La Marzocco sits on a butcher-block counter. Bagged coffee fills wooden shelves along the side wall. The counter card lists Sey for drip, Enjoy Coffee Roasters for the house espresso and Flowshares, a Harlem roaster, for the dark roast.
