By Dustin Brown
Before the Starbucks craze hit New York with an army of cookie-cutter coffee shops, Ben Weiss set out to create his own cozy nook where the coffee had kick and the crowd had vitality.
Eight years later, his vision has finally panned out in a small storefront that can’t help but stand out at Atlas Terminals in Glendale, where Brewed Awakening Coffee Co. is one of the only retail tenants in a massive industrial park.
But the route he took to get there was anything but direct.
“People ask me, ‘How did you find Glendale?’ ” Weiss said as he nursed a cup of tea while sitting one evening at a tile-faced table at the Brewed Awakening coffee bar. “I tell them, ‘Glendale found me.’ ”
The coffee shop is locally the most visible part of a business that Weiss has been growing since he incorporated Brewed Awakening in 1994. But it is only a small arm of an expanding enterprise that brings a unique brand of coffee to firehouses, delis and bakeries across the city.
When Weiss moved his coffee distribution business to Glendale two years ago, his landlords strongly encouraged him to open up the retail storefront. Weiss eagerly complied with a homey but funky coffee bar featuring an earthy decor and a broad range of products, from coffee to iced drinks, Java burgers, sandwiches and breakfast.
“My wife and I decorated it as a place we’d want to hang out,” he said.
It also proved to be an experiment demonstrating what might happen when Atlas Terminals turns into “The Shops at Atlas Park,” a retail center featuring high-end stores that is expected to open by 2005.
Brewed Awakening will stay put, because it sits in the half of the industrial park that will be unaffected by the conversion to retail. But the new use only spells good things for Weiss’ business, which will likely start luring more people to the hard-to-find corner where his coffee bar is tucked away.
“It’s exciting, what they’re doing,” said Weiss, a chipper 32-year-old with brown locks he combs back into a wavy tuft. “From the day I signed the lease, they really encouraged a coffee bar.”
Weiss came up with the name “Brewed Awakening” in 1994 when he sat down with his mother and devised a list of 50 possible titles for a business that did not yet exist.
“At the time, we thought we were so innovative with the name,” he admitted after rattling off some of the other Brewed Awakening coffee companies he has discovered since then. “We’d like to think we’re unique even if we don’t have a unique name.”
A finance major at Boston University, Weiss had worked in mortgage banking for a year before he threw in the towel and experienced what he dubbed his first mid-life crisis — at the tender age of 23.
Weiss grew up in Staten Island but during his college years his family moved to California, where he observed how Starbucks began invading the coast with what then was an innovative style of selling coffee.
“My company back then was just me figuring out how to open a coffee bar,” he said.
Weiss decided he wanted to bring something like that to New York, but no one would buy into his idea. His attempts to find investors fell flat.
“People didn’t understand why people would buy a $2.50 latte at the time,” he explained.
He came up with the idea of selling coffee from carts at movie theaters, teaming up with the Godiva chocolate company for four years as an independent contractor.
“Cafe Godiva took off,” he said. “Before you know it, we were in 80 movie theaters in six or seven states.”
Although it was a lucrative gig, Weiss bowed out when he realized the venture had leveled off and was unlikely to continue growing.
So he reinvented Brewed Awakening. Instead of targeting moviegoers, he turned to firefighters, ringing the doorbells at firehouses around the city to offer up a unique brand of joe, “Five-Alarm Brew Coffee.”
“I liked firehouses because they’re there 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they drink a lot of coffee,” he said.
He soon added delis and bakeries to his distribution lists, giving them free brewing equipment in exchange for their business buying his coffee.
But the latest twist in his business merged the firefighters with the delis. He started selling cappuccino machines painted fire-engine red that bore the Five-Alarm Brew name, then enlisted New York City firefighters to invest in the company. Each firefighter buys a number of machines, which are placed in delis across the city, and then the investor-firemen reap the profits of selling the cappuccino mixture to clients.
“It’s a great way to supplement their income,” Weiss said.
Meanwhile, a percentage of the profits goes to firefighter charities, a figure that has already reached $10,000.
His future plans include creating a second coffee shop within Atlas Park once the retail center opens, where he plans to roast his own beans as part of the business’ continued expansion. But the heart of the company is not likely to change.
“It’s very much a coffee house, it’s very much what I want a coffee house to be — it’s about community.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
