20 Up-And-Comers To Watch In The Coffee Bean Shop Industry
Five Brooklyn Coffee Bean Shops
If you're a coffee connoisseur You'll want to try out the shops selling coffee beans. These stores provide a large assortment of whole beans from all across the globe. They also sell unique kitchenware and trinkets.
Some of these shops offer subscriptions to their coffee beans. Others offer large quantities of coffee beans at their retail locations.
Porto Rico Importing Co.
Veteran coffee seller specializing in international brews, as well as a variety of loose teas
When you enter this quaint West Village shop, the aroma of freshly roasting beans fills the air. The shelves are packed with jars, sacks and dark brown beans, with tea-making equipment, coffee accessories and sugar.
Originally opened in 1907, Porto Rico was founded by Italian immigrants Patsy Albanese. Greenwich Village at the time was experiencing an influx Italian immigrants, who opened businesses to cater to their food needs. Albanese named the shop after the famous Puerto Rican Coffee she imported and sold - a drink that was so popular that at the time, even the Pope would drink it.
Porto Rico offers 130 different kinds of beans, including those from around the globe, at three locations, including Bleecker Street, Essex Market and online. Porto Rico also roasts their own beans and provides wholesale distribution to 350 restaurants in NYC, Brooklyn and Brooklyn.
Peter Longo, the current owner and president of the business, grew up above his family's bakery located on Bleecker Street where his father was the owner of Porto Rico. The business is still run by the shop in the same fashion as his father did and grandfather.
Sey Coffee
Sey Coffee, a coffee shop and roaster is located on Grattan Street, in Morgantown. This neighborhood in Brooklyn's Bushwick district is located on Grattan Street. Tobin Polk, Lance Schnorenberg and their 33-year-old co-founders started roasting coffee in an apartment on the fourth floor, just across the street in the year 2011. The name was Lofted 500g coffee beans. Local clients included Greenpoint's Budin, and Soho cart services Peddler and Peddler.
Sey's commitment to buying micro-lots or whole harvests from single farmers has earned it the praise of New York City coffee enthusiasts. The last time Sey was in the market, he purchased a six-bag micro lot of Danilo Dones Sitio Catucai from Brazil's Espirito Santo region. The beans were carefully picked at peak ripeness, removed by flotation to eliminate defects and dried fermented for about 36 hours before being dried on the farm. The result is a cup that has hints of fruit and melon.
Sey's commitment to holistically improving the health of growers, staff and customers extends beyond the store. It utilizes biodegradable disposables as well as composts, keeping waste out of landfills and converting it to substances that reduce harmful greenhouse gases and nourish soil. It also eliminates gratuity, which puts the baristas in a position to provide their livelihoods and encourage them to focus on their craft.
La Cabra
La Cabra, a modern specialty-coffee company, was founded in Aarhus in Denmark in 2012. It started with a small shop and a committed team. Their open and creative approach to delivering a truly exceptional coffee bean company experience has earned them a following not only in their hometown, but globally.
La Carba has a rigorous process to find their perfect beans, searching through hundreds of different lots each year to identify the ones that fit their ideals. They roast them light, adjusting the desired flavor profile. This gives the coffees a more vibrant taste and clarity.
The East Village store opened last October with a sleek, minimalist design. It's been praised worldwide by coffee aficionados for its exacting pour-overs and baked goods supervised by head baker Jared Sexton, who's previously worked at Bien Cuit and Dominique Ansel.
The shop uses a La Marzocco Modbar as well as the cups, plates and bowls are crafted by Wurtz ceramics, a father-and-son studio in Horsens. In a recent interview with Atlanta Coffee Shops General Manager Ian Walla revealed that La Cabra serves 250 different coffees per day and has typically seven or eight different varieties available at any time.
The Plant Coffee Roasting Plant Coffee
The Roasting Plant is the only multi-unit coffee beans sale retailer that roasts on-site and brews to order, with each cup of coffee roasted and brewed to your specifications in less than one minute. It is a search engine for the highest-grade specialty beans that are directly sourced, giving customers choice and quality.
The roaster on site uses fluid bed technology, which is quite different from the drum-type machines that are commonly used in most UK coffee shops. The beans are blown around a heated box by high-velocity air that keeps the green beans in suspension and allows roasting to happen in a steady manner when they pass through the machine.
I tried the Sumatran Coffee and it was smooth and rich with a rich and velvety taste. Dark chocolate was evident in the aroma. As you sipped the coffee, you could smell subtle citrus fruit flavors.
The coffee is then be taken to the store's Eversys Super-Automatic Brewing Machines and brewed according your specifications within less than a minute. Customers can select from nine single origin selections and a range of blends.
Parlor Coffee
Parlor Coffee was founded in 2012 behind a barbershop, with a single group espresso machine. It has since evolved into a burgeoning coffee roastery, with beans that are available in top 10 coffee beans (click through the next page) cafes and restaurants as well as home brewers in every city. Parlor Coffee is dedicated to sourcing only the highest-quality beans, that have been through a lengthy journey before they reach its roasters.
In their own words in their own words, they "have an unrelenting passion for craft and a belief that great coffee should be available to anyone." They achieve this by putting their home-like space on a residential street--think compost bins, a chalkboard welcome, handmade up-cycled products and a simple deco.
They roast their own blends (there were six at the time I was there) and single-origins, but they also have cuppings on Sundays that are accessible to the public. Think of it as a brewery tasting room--you can smell and taste the ground beans, from chocolatey to earthy (one was almost tomato-like!). It's a bit away from the main roads, but well worth the trip.