Specialty coffee in New York
23 cafés, 6 roasters, 7 neighbourhoods
Around 1900, most of the coffee drunk in the United States came in through New York Harbor, and the blue-and-white Anthora paper cup was designed in 1963 for the city’s Greek-owned coffee shops and diners. The cafés on this page are all in Manhattan and Brooklyn. In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, and in the East Village, several are a short walk apart.
The cafés, by neighbourhood
For 6 of the 23 cafés we know whose coffee they pour. The neighbourhood with the most cafés is Williamsburg & Greenpoint.
More about these labels
- In-house
- The coffee is the café’s own roast.
- Regular roaster
- The café pours this roaster’s coffee. Cupd researched this, mostly on the café’s or the roaster’s own website. Once a café has claimed its profile, it can confirm or remove the roaster.
- Roaster not listed yet
- Cupd does not know yet whose coffee the café pours. Cafés can add their roaster for free, and guests can report it in the app.
Williamsburg & Greenpoint
6 cafés
Alita Café
Long-time friends Alejandro Ceballos and Paolo Maliksi opened Alita in 2021. The name is the nickname Alejandro used for his grandmother when he was growing up.
Black Brick Coffee
Devoción
Colombian-born Steven Sutton launched Devoción in 2006. In Williamsburg you walk through an exposed-brick corridor into Colombian greenery, under a pitched roof and skylight, and the coffee lab is visible from the street.
Maru Coffee
Maru roasts all its coffee in Glassell Park, Los Angeles, and also has this café in New York. The name comes from the Korean San Ma Ru, which means mountaintop.
Sweetleaf
Rich Nieto started Sweetleaf with a friend in 2008, in a tiny shop just over the Pulaski Bridge. In 2015 Sweetleaf moved into a 1920s warehouse in Greenpoint, with the café at the front and the roastery at the back.
Variety Coffee
This is where Variety started, before it grew into a roaster with cafés in several boroughs. They pour their own seasonal single origins and blends, under curved ceilings and rich wood fixtures.
East Village
4 cafés
Abraço
Jamie McCormick and Liz Quijada founded Abraço in 2007, and they roast their own coffee. The name means embrace and comes from a Brazilian pop song by Gilberto Gil.
MUD
This is the permanent home of The Mudtruck, MUD's coffee truck. It's a restaurant with a garden, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, world-kitchen style.
Ninth Street Espresso
Ken Nye founded Ninth Street Espresso in 2001 with a single East Village shop. Today the company runs four cafés and roasts its own coffee in Long Island City, Queens.
Not As Bitter
Not As Bitter specialises in fresh fruit lattes and in what it calls specialty cocktail coffee.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn
4 cafés
Ciao, Gloria
Ciao, Gloria is the café of baker Renato Poliafito, a co-founder of the dessert specialist Baked. He gave it a slight Italian touch, Italian pastries included.
Dayglow / Niteglow
Dayglow is a coffee brand with cafés in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and this one took over a spot once used by an automotive welding company. The hand-brew menu has around ten coffees from roasters around the world, and Niteglow is its alter ego for drinks with alcohol.
SEY Coffee
SEY is a micro roastery based in Brooklyn, and here you drink its light-roasted coffees in an industrial space under a skylit ceiling full of plants. The aim is a crystal-clear expression of each coffee.
White Noise Coffee Co.
White Noise started in Flushing, Queens, and also has a café in Hell's Kitchen. The coffee is their own, roasted in small batches in New York City.
Midtown & Chelsea
4 cafés
Cafe Grumpy
Caroline Bell and Chris Timbrell founded Café Grumpy in Greenpoint in 2005 and have roasted their own coffee since 2009. This café opened in Grand Central in May 2014, and if you stay, you get your coffee in a ceramic cup.
Felix Roasting Co.
Felix opened here in September 2018, and everything in the café was designed in-house by Ken Fulk and his team. In 2020 Felix said most of its coffee was roasted medium, to bring out sweetness and balance.
Grace Street
Grace Street calls itself a Korean coffeehouse, with Asian desserts next to the drinks, from Korean doughnuts to mochi waffles. The team has shaved ice specialists as well as baristas.
Intelligentsia Coffee
Chicago-based roaster Intelligentsia opened its first New York location here in 2013, inside the High Line Hotel. The building is a former seminary dormitory dating back to 1895.
Lower Manhattan
3 cafés
Cafe Integral
Café Integral was founded in 2012 and serves only Nicaraguan coffee, from co-owner Cesar Vega's home country. The team spends more than three months on the ground with its producers, and the coffee is roasted in small batches in Brooklyn.
La Cabra
La Cabra started in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2011 and has its roastery in Copenhagen. After a first New York café in the East Village, SoHo came second, with a wide selection of seasonal coffees as filter and espresso.
Suited
The name is partly inspired by the tailor father of one of the founders. Suited keeps a wide multi-roaster selection, both on the menu and on the shelves.
Other neighbourhoods
2 cafés
The Oma
Lizzy Okpo named her Harlem shops oma, meaning beautiful in Igbo. This is the second one: coffee, an early evening glass of wine, and at night a barber shop and braiding studio.
Arcane Estate Coffee
Arcane's founder, Edgar Acosta-Masferrer, planted the first trees on his family estate, Villa Luna, in Volcán, Panama, in 2018 and 2019. The coffee comes from the estate's own harvest and a small circle of neighbouring producers in Chiriquí, and the roasts are kept intentionally light.
Roasters poured in New York
6 roasters across the cafés above, by how many of them pour each one.
Roasters from New York
Devoción
Devoción buys only fresh coffee during the Colombian harvest, dry-mills it at its own facility in Bogotá and roasts in Brooklyn. By their count, the coffee gets from origin to your cup in 10 days.
White Noise Coffee
White Noise has been around since 2017 and says it buys from farms that look after people and the planet. They roast in small batches in New York City.
From elsewhere
Questions
Which roasters can I find in New York’s cafés?
This page lists 6 roasters, among them Devoción, Doubleshot, La Cabra, Maru Coffee and SEY. Next to each roaster it says whether the coffee is the café’s own roast and where Cupd got the information. The labels are explained above the list.
How up to date is this list?
It is a copy of the Cupd app as of November 11, 2026. Cafés and guests keep the app current, so open New York in Cupd to see what has changed since.
A café is missing. How does it get on here?
In the app, search for it and tap “Missing a café? Tell us”. If it is your café, claim it for free on the page for cafés and enter your roaster. It shows up here with the next update.
Where the café texts come from, read on November 11, 2026
- Abraço: villagevoice.com, sprudge.com, ediblemanhattan.com
- Alita Café: alitacafe.com
- Arcane Estate Coffee: arcaneestatecoffee.com, arcaneestatecoffee.com
- Cafe Grumpy: cafegrumpy.com, dailycoffeenews.com, cafegrumpy.com
- Cafe Integral: cafeintegral.com, sprudge.com
- Ciao, Gloria: bklyner.com, appetitomagazine.com
- Dayglow / Niteglow: sprudge.com
- Devoción: devocion.com, devocion.com
- Felix Roasting Co.: dailycoffeenews.com
- Grace Street: bygracestreet.com, bygracestreet.com
- Intelligentsia Coffee: dailycoffeenews.com, intelligentsia.com
- La Cabra: lacabra.com, lacabra.com
- Maru Coffee: marucoffee.com, marucoffee.com, marucoffee.com
- MUD: mudnyc.com
- Ninth Street Espresso: dailycoffeenews.com, ninthstreetespresso.com
- Not As Bitter: notasbitter.com
- SEY Coffee: seycoffee.com, sprudge.com, seycoffee.com
- Suited: sprudge.com, suitednyc.com
- Sweetleaf: greenpointers.com
- The Oma: timeout.com
- Variety Coffee: sprudge.com
- White Noise Coffee Co.: whitenoisecoffee.com, whitenoisecoffee.com, whitenoisecoffee.com
- White Noise Coffee: whitenoisecoffee.com, whitenoisecoffee.com, whitenoisecoffee.com
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