The great thing about locally roasted coffee is that there is something out there for everyone.
The trick is figuring out which of the phenomenal local roasters in NYC offers the perfect finished product for your palate. Today, we are profiling some of our favorite local roasters around the city to give you, the conscientious coffee connoisseur, a better idea of what coffee roasters in the area have to offer.
Café Grumpy
The first Café Grumpy location opened in Greenpoint in 2005 and has since expanded to include cafés throughout NYC, in Park Slope, Chelsea, the Lower East Side, the Fashion District and one at Grand Central. Café Grumpy’s scowling logo should not dissuade you from picking up a cup of what is often referred to as the “best locally roasted coffee” in the city.
Their signature house offering is Heartbreaker Espresso; it’s a sweet blend of beans plucked from Central America and Ethiopia. Café Grumpy is consistently ranked in the “top coffee shops” of New York City, with Caroline Bell’s shop comfortably ranked within the top few roasters. When asked why she chose to start a café, Bell says, “ It’s just the aspect of going somewhere and getting something good to drink and hanging out with people that you like and talking.” And we could not agree more – a huge part of what makes good coffee good is an enjoyable conversation. Having some killer single-origin roasts, developed with care from farm to cup, certainly doesn’t hurt.
Irving Farm Coffee Roasters
In 1996, the founders of Irving Farm opened a small café at 71 Irving Place. Their passion for providing the best possible cup of coffee soon bloomed to include a roasting facility out in the Hudson Valley, sited on a converted farm. Why? Because the team realized that locally roasted coffee could bridge the gap between good coffee and a great coffee experience.
The roastery, nestled at the foot of the Berkshires and Catskills, transforms an amazing selection of beans sourced by Irving Farm’s own specialists from breathtaking sites in the South Pacific, East Africa and Latin America. The founders of Irving Farm are truly proud of their presence in NYC, so it should come as no surprise that their signature offering is known as Gotham Dark Roast. It is a very NYC take on the traditional French roast, featuring a trifecta of Central American favorites.
MUD Coffee
That old axiom about great things coming in small packages definitely applies to the folks at Mud Coffee. In 2001, Mud found its feet, or rather its wheels, as a coffee company. Mud Coffee is available from a Consolidated Edison step-van – no shops, no cafés, no nonsense – just thick, amazing coffee that has been voted the “best cup of coffee” in New York time and again.
These days there is a restaurant – Mud Spot – as well as a kiosk – Mud Park – where fans of thick, rich Mud Coffee can get their fix, but the Mud Truck itself is out for maintenance until some time in 2015. The best news of all for Mud fans? Corporate Essentials is able to offer locally roasted coffee blends from the infamous Mud Coffee in a number of convenient formats for your office.
Joe NYC
Joe is probably the simplest name you could give a coffee company – and their philosophy for buying (and selling) coffee is equally straightforward. After ten years as a successful coffee shop, Joe started roasting their own coffees in 2013 with a simple, four-point plan for success: be fair and traceable, strive for quality, embrace flexibility and build sustainable relationships. The result? Exquisite, locally roasted coffee that is accessible to those with both highly refined palates and regular coffee drinkers seeking a caffeine hit.
Joe’s core principle is to “build, strengthen and maintain community at every level” – by seeking unique single-origin beans, building close ties to those communities and continuing to provide one of the most hospitable environments in an often unforgiving city, Joe deserves its place in the pantheon of NYC’s favorite local coffee roasters.
Toby’s Estate
Toby’s Estate is a small-batch coffee roaster with a truly personal touch. Toby is more than a name, he is an actual person who worked as a barista, sharpened his cupping skills and learned the ropes of trading on Brazilian and Guatemalan plantations, then took the plunge and started roasting coffee in his mom’s garage.
The estate is real too – nestled in Santa Clara, Chiriqui, Panama. Offering small batches that vary with the growing seasons, Toby’s Estate provides a solid portfolio of single-origin beans alongside a mouth-watering selection of blends that appeal to those who understand the difference between coffee-flavored coffee and coffee with real flavor.
Toby’s Estate truly wants to share the love, so in addition to the direct farm relationships they treasure and the contributions the company makes to areas where coffees are produced, they offer a series of educational programs for coffee fans – from public cupping to home brewing tutorials – allowing us all to unlock the best of the locally roasted coffee beans we love.
Plowshares
There are “small-batch coffee roasters” and then there is Plowshares – a company so dedicated to their small-batch roasting philosophy that they guarantee to never roast more than 30 pounds of beans at a time. As the Ramapo Valley’s best-kept secret, they house a single Probat UG15 roaster – in case you didn’t guess, the 15 stands for 15 kilos, the maximum capacity of the machine. Plowshares has held a consistent place on lists of the nation’s top coffee roasters, and with good reason.
Plowshares takes pride in their commitment to the artisan approach in both their single-origin and blend selections: hunting for the best beans, sampling a variety of roasts, dialing in the specifics to make the best possible cup of coffee and offering the stunning results to their discerning customers on a roast-on-demand basis. They favor organic beans that come from fair-trade sources, and offer one of the greatest “guilt-free” perks for coffee drinkers – they are 100% wind-powered.
Whether your interest in locally roasted coffee is personal or professional, exploring the variety of ways beans from any given country can be harvested and developed into a finished product can be a truly inspiring journey.
If you are interested in learning more about options for providing locally roasted coffee in your NYC office, contact the team of coffee experts at Corporate Essentials today.
