An Incomplete Café History in New Haven
New Haven’s coffee culture probably started to shape in the 1980s around the time when Willoughby's Coffee & Tea was founded in 1985 by Bob Williams and Barry Levine and they began to expand quickly across Connecticut, including in New Haven, the hometown of Yale University.
In the early 1970s, New Haven was more like a bar town rather than a city for coffee. Although there was a popular bar in New Haven called The Foundry Café, located at Audubon Street, Foundry was certainly a bar instead of a professional coffeehouse as the locals can tell. The fate of Foundry was sealed in a Netflix-like dramatic way in the late 1980s when the FBI raided the bar and declared this proved to be a major cocaine distribution point in New Haven.
The Foundry Café was then shut down permanently.
Willoughby's Coffee & Tea has several branches in New Haven.
However, the coffee culture in New Haven was not really affected by the tragic ending of Foundry. Instead, starting from the 1990s New Haven became the home for at least three popular coffee shops including Willoughby's Coffee & Tea, Daily Caffe (now defunct), and the relatively later-comer, Koffee?. Yes, it’s Koffee?, always with the question mark in its official brand.
Koffee? was opened in 1993 on the exactly same location of The Foundry Café, aka the “cocaine spot” sealed by the FBI. Even on the official website of Koffee?, today the trendy coffeehouse still jokingly acknowledged: “It was an odd little space with good coffee and an alternative reputation.”
Koffee? came to the play later after Willoughby's Coffee & Tea and Daily Caffe already gathered their fans in New Haven respectively. But eventually the three coffeehouses became the most talked and popular go-to places for Yale students and other local residents looking for quick caffeine fix. You can also spend the whole day there working on your own stuff.
In fact, way before WeWork became a popular term for co-working space, I think Yale students already knew what co-working could be like in New Haven. Just go to those coffeehouses.
Coffee is a big part of Yale campus culture.
Willoughby's Coffee & Tea is also a popular breakfast place.
Some Yalies (students and alums of Yale) may ask: What about the historic Atticus Bookstore Cafe, located at 1082 Chapel Street and already a shared memory for many generations of Yalies. It turned out Atticus was founded initially just as a small independent bookstore in 1975. Atticus only began to have coffee and food services at its same-location bookstore until 1981.
There are some other bookstore/café type of shops in New Haven. Given their limited seats and choices of food and beverage, many locals still view them more as bookstores than professional cafes.
What about those big brands like US coffee chain giant Starbucks? Starbucks came to New Haven first in 2004 to open the branch on the corner of Chapel and High streets, which is still open for business to this day. It later added another branch also on Chapel Street in 2018.
Maybe for economic reasons, unlike in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, home state for prestigious universities like Harvard and MIT, New Haven hasn’t really seen strong interests from national café brands apart from Starbucks. One of my new favourites for coffee in the US is Bluestone Lane, which has shops in Boston and Washington DC. Harvard students also like to go to Blue Bottle for coffee, originally from Silicon Valley and now also in Cambridge, just few blocks from the landmark Harvard Square.
There was very little information left on the Internet about Daily Caffe, which was once upon a time one of the “most popular three” in New Haven and located at 316 Elm Street. According to a report by The New York Times dated October 23, 1994, the Daily Caffe regularly held poetry readings and art exhibits that attracted a crowd of devoted patrons, many wearing the latest in grunge, crunch or bohemian black.
Amid the din of espresso machines and Pearl Jam, one of the co-owners of Daily Caffe, Steve Shapiro, commented on the growing trend for coffee in New Haven at that time: "Lately, there's a sense that New Haven is starting to go in the right direction.”
That was 1994. A nice coffeehouse apparently proved to have some good social impact on the local people and community.
Let’s go back to the history about Koffee?. Did anyone hear there was in fact a second Koffee? branch at York Street? Yes, it was called Koffee Too?. And yes, the branch name also contained the question mark in its brand.
In early 2000 Yale approached the lovely couple owner of Koffee?, Lee and Tracy Jackson. Yale asked them if they would be interested to take up the space at 276 York Street, which was formerly occupied by Willoughby’s. The couple owner said yes and then “Koffee Too?” was quickly born on that location.
Blue State Coffee at Wall Street (now closed)
Common Grounds replaced Blue State Coffee at Wall Street.
Common Grounds has a variety of coffee flavours to choose.
Common Grounds is more than just coffee.
Common Grounds recently opened a new branch at York Street.
But the difficulties to manage two coffee shops in the meantime went beyond the couple owner’s expectations. Two years later, they decided to sell the original Koffee? at Audubon Street to Duncan Goodall, a Yale alum who used to study at Koffee? when he was a student. Then Lee and Tracy continued to focus their time and attention on Koffee Too? on York Street until it was replaced by another local popular brand in New Haven, Blue State Coffee.
Blue State Coffee surprisingly decided to retire from the coffee scene in Connecticut entirely in late 2022, following the years-long Covid pandemic. All Blue State Coffee branches in Connecticut were eventually taken over by two relatively newcomers to the coffee business in the Constitution State -- G Café and Common Grounds.
G Cafe is also well known for its croissant.
A G Cafe branch in downtown New Haven
Both the two brand chains fortunately also kept many former Blue State Coffee employees, so the old customers may still find some familiar faces in today’s G Café or Common Grounds branches in New Haven.
Owner and founder of G Cafe Andrea Corazzini was quoted by the Yale Daily News dated November 18, 2022 as saying: “A coffee shop bakery is a place where you go and talk with friends … and you share moments and stories and enjoy coffee and food.”
So, where are you going to have your cup of coffee in New Haven today?
