When you’re shopping — really shopping — hunting and scouring and roaming around, searching doggedly for that just-right item that you know exists but is taking all of your attention and effort to find, you need a little help. Sometimes that help comes in the form of caffeine; really delicious caffeine! Starting tomorrow, December 1, at Jamesport’s Lumber + Salt, the artisanal hand-roasting work of Jamesport Sourdough & Coffee will be on hand at the stylish salvage shop on Sound Avenue.
“Aesthetically speaking, we’re always creating new ways to approach our space and how our clients interact with it. The way we put it to ourselves is we’re not selling a product, we’re selling a feeling,” says Brooke Cantone who, along with John Mazur, own Lumber + Salt — the sprawling indoor/outdoor antique and salvage space with its myriad mini pop-up retail experiences tucked within. “Coffee is the kiss on top and rounds out the overall experience here as a destination. It’s the finishing salt in the space!”
The collaboration between Cantone and Mazer and Jamesport Sourdough & Coffee owners Ana Burcroff and Brett Koons happened like a lot of organic partnerships on the East End — like-minded local business owners putting their heads together and coming up with creative ways to align their talents.
“We started with porch pickup [coffee beans] for 20 people, and in a year our coffee was in some of the most recognizable gourmet markets on North Fork. This isn’t uncharted territory for us in terms of growing and staying flexible and open-minded,” says Burcroff. “The key is working with someone you trust and are aligned with, aesthetically and business-wise. I was really happy Brooke and John thought of us. We’re in good company.”
Lumber + Salt had played around with a pop-up coffee concept with NoFo Moto, but were looking to bring the concept in-house to fuel their customers within the grand space that houses a trove of unique items for the home, along with surprises like their own branded sweats and tees, vintage cowboy boots, soy-based candles and multitude of other treats and treasures.
With beans from Jamesport Sourdough & Coffee now bestowed upon the hot, buzzy brews coming out of Lumber + Salt, Cantone and Mazur just added a thoughtful and constant touch of hospitality to their business, which they founded in 2014.
Burcroff and Koons caught the coffee bug when they briefly lived in that bastion of bean culture, Seattle. “The coffee there was amazing!” says Burcroff. “But when we moved back to New York City, what we found just wasn’t doing it for us. Not only was it cost prohibitive, but there didn’t seem to be many true roasters doing it for the love of it. Almost all had big corporations behind them.”
Koons began playing around with roasting at home around 2018, honing and dialing-in his technique and getting to know the beans of different countries. “It’s an agricultural product,” he says. “One of the biggest lesson I learned was that to get to the flavor profile we were looking for, I had to find different countries, learn about bean quotes, and mix and match based on the season.”
And while the term “consistency” doesn’t sound like the central nerve system for creative pursuit, in the world of coffee, that’s where the fun lies. In order to find that detectable sweet spot, roasters must continually seek out that just-right combination of beans, and the roasting of them, to get the flavor and aromatic profile to a place that speaks to their individual style.
Koons, who finds that beans from Central and South America tend to be where he gravitates for Jamesport Sourdough & Coffee’s profile, found this endeavor to be something that ignited his creative spirit and imagination.
Meanwhile, the couple were spending weekends on the North Fork pre-pandemic, and the idea for creating a small-batch roasting business for their East End neighbors began to percolate. “It’s why the North Fork is so great,” says Burcroff. “It’s a place where people can do all these cool, small businesses and create possibility.”
When the COVID 19 lockdown happened, the couple moved out east permanently and Koons began offering bags of his hand-roasted beans for touchless pick-up from their front porch. It quickly became a regular part of their growing small business. Soon enough, bags of their beans were sold in Lombardi’s Love Lane Market, Southold General and, now, Lumber + Salt, both in bag and brewed behind the latter’s lovely indoor bar.
The full range of classic espresso drinks and drip coffee made with Jamesport Sourdough & Coffee small-batch beans will be available inside Lumber + Salt at 5570 Sound Ave. in Jamesport from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday through Sunday.
“We have always looked for artisanal people who are creatively, authentically, and genuinely motivated to make the North Fork not just a special place, but to preserve what it is, and not do things because they’re trendy,” says Cantone. “It’s all about authenticity in community.”
And, of course, really, really good coffee.
