A couple of days ago, we announced that Overwinter Coffee was moving into new digs at Roosevelt Square. Now Perks Café has announced that the local roaster will be their exclusive coffee used in all of their espresso beverages at both Elmwood and Main Street locations.
The primary bean will be ‘The Easy Drinker’ from the Mogiana region in Brazil.
“I am always trying to find the best quality local products to use at our café,” said Julie Leone, Perks Director of Operations and Marketing. “We had a great response to their beans during a coffee event we hosted; I knew instantly I wanted to work with them!”
It looks as if Overwinter is gaining grounds in the local coffee market. From pop-ups to wholesale accounts, to a brick and mortar in downtown Buffalo. Makes you wonder… who are these guys, and what’s their big plan? To get some answers, we reached out to co-owner Josh Halliman to find out what was brewing.
What’s the good news at Overwinter?
Single origin coffees strictly: we don’t blend, but we do sample many dozens of coffees for each coffee we buy.
How are you mixing things up in Buffalo?
Seasonality: due to the crop cycles single origin coffees, we will always have seasonally changing beans as the prior crop runs out of availability.
What’s the answer to only fueling Buffalonians with caffeinated brews?
Decaf: while decaf is wildly divisive, we find that people who really love coffee sometimes want to drink coffee just for the taste, so we’ll always have single origin decaf espresso and coffee.
Aside from coffee options, what can we look forward to:
Sweet Food: we’re partnering with Pastry by Camille – a French-born pastry chef who relocated to Buffalo due to his wife being from the area. He will be making us macarons and potentially éclairs, in some cases using our own coffees to flavor the fillings, as to create espresso and dessert pairings.
Sounds sweet! Anything savory?
Real Food: we’ll be making grab-and-go breakfast and lunch items such as chia puddings, yogurts, oats/oatmeal-based items, fruit, etc.
Tell us about the roaster operation.
Roasting: we import to our coffee roasting space in the farmland outside of Buffalo and roast all of our own beans on a Diedrich roaster (made in the USA).
We see that you’re teaming up with Perks. How did that come about?
Wholesale: we wholesale our beans to Grindhaus on Allen, Perks on Elmwood & Main for espresso, and Las Puertas on Rhode Island at this time. We’re in talks to add additional locations and vendors. Our wholesale model will continue alongside the café.
How do people get their hands on Overwinter Coffee outside of cafés and pop-ups?
e-commerce: we’ll always have our coffees shipped free on our e-commerce store in whole bean format.
Tell us about the Overwinter team.
Ben Trojan (part owner, head roaster) grew up in Buffalo, moved to Washington D.C. to obtain his Master’s degree and worked in the coffee business in D.C. at Peregrine Espresso. His experience in a high volume third wave coffee scene was the driving factor behind starting overwinter. Also speaks some Mandarin and Polish. Come in and speak Polish at him, he’ll like you.
Myself (Josh Halliman – part owner, operational director), I grew up in Hamburg, NY. I currently own a separate tech company that employs eight full time employees in or from the Buffalo, NY region. I also own and invest in real estate in North Buffalo, Central Park & Allentown with my wife. I prompted Ben to start this because he was roasting his own beans in his kitchen and they were too damn good for me not to invest and get this product out to the public.
Ok, what about the hours of operation when you open up the Roosevelt Square location?
Hours: at the first location @ Roosevelt Square, we’ll be a breakfast and lunch hours location due to the largely office-based demand in the region.