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Photo: Courtesy of Birch Coffee
What began as a chance meeting through friends, eventually lead to the multifaceted Birch Coffee brand. Located in many of Manhattan’s boroughs, their shops boast blends spanning from Guatemala to Tanzania, roasted with care in their Long Island City Roasting House. But the founders, Paul and Jeremy, extend their care-oriented ethos past their product. They also work to differentiate their shops from other urban coffeehouses and make them into places where customers can connect and engage in something other than their computer screens. They’re also using their business prowess to help other budding enterprises. Downtown asked the “The Birch Guys” more about their brand and what they are looking forward to in the near future
What makes Birch Coffee different from other coffee conglomerates?
At Birch, we place a large emphasis on the overall experience of walking into a coffee shop. Our ethos is to make awesome coffee and serve it up with a smile and a “thank you” every time. We employ a number of strategies to ensure our guests receive a truly unique experience whenever they enter one of our stores:
Quality Coffee: We personally oversee all of the roasting at our Long Island City roast house and visit every farm we source our coffee from. By controlling every step of the process to the best of our abilities, we can provide consistently quality coffee.
Photo: Courtesy of Birch Coffee
Lending Libraries: Each of our seven Birch shops features a library of books from a range of genres and tastes. We encourage the community and our customers to pick up a book and embrace the escapism reading provides.
Conversation Starters, the Ignition Initiative: We have our trademark conversation starters, available in all of our shops that people can use if they feel comfortable.
Happy Workforce: We personally train all of our baristas from the beginning and have weekly meetings to share ideas and foster open communication amongst the team. We aim to ensure that our staff are happy and excited about coffee. Our staff is constantly on their feet so we also offer weekly massages at each location too.
No-Wifi: We’ve recently eliminated wifi in all seven (soon to be eight) of our Birch Coffee shops as a way to encourage customers to enjoy interaction with one another and take a break from their laptop screens and phones.
Photo: Courtesy of Birch Coffee
How/when was the company founded?
Jeremy Lyman and I met through mutual friends a little over a decade ago.
After years of daydreaming about what it might be like to be able to hang out in a coffee shop all day and get paid to do it, Jeremy mentioned the idea of opening a coffee shop to me while I was pursuing a career in acting at the time. Together we attended our first coffee convention in 2008, where I experienced that life-changing “aha” moment with a naturally processed cup of Ethiopian Amaro Gayo. Officially in love with coffee, and after about a year of hard work and vigorous research, we opened our first Birch Coffee shop in the fall of 2009 in the Flatiron District of Manhattan.
Is there any exciting upcoming news regarding the company?
Birch Coffee is just about to open it’s eighth store in Hunts Point. This is a challenging and therefore exciting project due to its location and our aims for the community surrounding it. Interiors and furniture are sourced locally where possible and only those living in the area will be employed at Birch Coffee Hunts Point. We will also be holding regular complementary coffee cuppings which will aim to bring the community together to enjoy Birch and encourage the passion for coffee that has brought us so much joy.
How has being located in New York affected the businesses growth and direction?
Being in New York has given us exposure to incredible people and resources that have helped us become what we are – to gain this sort of exposure would be much more difficult in a smaller city – this has been a huge factor for us. Also Jeremy and I may never have crossed paths and met if we weren’t in New York! The city itself is the type A, foot on the gas style city, which has worked to push us to be the best versions of ourselves in a city where no one stops. It inspires us every day to keep going.
Photo: Courtesy of Birch Coffee
The website mentions the founders hoping to “give back” to those hoping to start their own business. What other enterprises have they helped out/ become part of?
From the business expertise we have garnered throughout the process of building Birch we’ve been able to help other businesses get off the ground. So far we’ve helped with the start-up of two coffee shops and a restaurant of a friend. The most challenging part can be the licensing and the legal processes when first opening a business so we readily offer advice on this. We know what it’s like starting out and trying to navigate through the minefield of red-tape involved so we’re happy to alleviate others of the stress where we can. If nothing else, we simply love sitting down and talking to like minded individuals who are tired of their, perhaps, mundane day job and are looking to create something a bit out of their comfort zone.
Additionally, we work with the culinary department of Long Island City High School, which is right next to our Roast House. We’ve created a weekly coffee training program with them where we teach everything about coffee production including roasting, cupping, sourcing and brewing. These are eleventh graders who are looking to move into the hospitality industry and have a real passion for it. Our aim is to show them what’s available out there and that there are opportunities for them in coffee.
More information on Birch coffee and their expending brand can be found on their website.
-by Johanna Silver