LONG ISLAND CITY — A new neighborhood coffee shop is giving locally-sourced products a whole new meaning.
Coffeed, which recently opened at 37-18 Northern Blvd., is making its sandwiches and salads with vegetables from a farm on the roof of its building run by Brooklyn Grange and plans to give some of its profits to charity.
“Last week our cook ran out of cilantro for guacamole so she went to the farm and got some,” said Frank Raffaele, one of the owners, who also runs Helping Humans, a non-profit in the same building. “You can’t get more local than six floors up.”
Every Wednesday, Brooklyn Grange sets up its farm stand inside the coffee shop and also sells its products there on a daily basis, including pickles, hot sauce, honey and caponata.
The coffee comes from small farms around the world, including Burundi, Jamaica, Ethiopia and Brazil and is bought through direct trade. Soon the coffee shop will also start roasting the beans on the premises, said Raffaele.
Coffeed offers both drip coffee and so pour-over brews using single origin coffees in which each cup is brewed individually with all of the beans coming from the same farm.
The coffee shop has also teamed up with Apiary, an East Village restaurant (one of the Coffeed owners, Sam Kim, also owns Apiary).
The eatery will be using Coffeed’s coffees and teas and the coffee shop will be getting recipes from Scott Bryan, Apiary’s chef.
Coming from a non-profit background, Raffaele said he wanted the new place to include a charitable component.
“We give 10 percent of our coffee and beverage sales and 5 percent of our food sales to charity,” he said.
As of now, the money goes to City Growers, a non-profit educational organization based at Brooklyn Grange, which provides workshops on food, ecology and health. In the future, the coffee shop owners want to open additional locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and to include more charities.
“We want the community to be engaged and to feel good about the charitable part of our operation,” Raffaele said.
The owners are also planning to include a stand called “Made in Long Island City,” where small local food manufacturers can sell their produce.
Sandwiches at Coffeed are around $5 to $7, a cup of drip coffee costs about $2 and a cup of single origin ranges from about $3 to $6.
