Ground Support Cafe
399 W Broadway, New York, NY 10012
Ground Support has been an integral part of New York City coffee for over a dozen years. They were adopted as the communal living room for Soho, and they became friends with everyone who passed by. They travelled to origin to meet with farmers, trained hundreds of baristas to brew well and showcase their coffee.
They used local products to feed their clientele with house made sandwiches and pastry. They now offer consult with all aspects of business including: site procurement, cafe design, bar flow, brand identity, strategic marketing, vertical integration, hiring and training, wholesale, e-commerce, palate development, and concept execution. Plus, they have a relaxed approach to the roasting: they are using the same direct trade coffees as all of the top roasters, but they are less aggressive about how they make their purchases. This wouldn’t have occurred to them if it weren’t for Covid. They now develop value coffees using blends from current and past crop coffees. They source top scoring coffees from the previous growing season which the farmers have not been able to sell. When stored correctly past crop coffees are just as delicious as current crops, but less expensive. In buying past crop green coffees they are helping the farmers mitigate their losses in a growing season. By employing the best roasters around they are able to deliver nice coffees tat a much lower price. While Covid may have closed a lot of local cafes and exaggerated the economical problems in coffee, which go all the way up the supply chain, they are not new problems. Ground Support blend and roast these coffees as a delicious and long term solution to help everyone along the way. This is truly a win / win deal for everyone.