Don Carvajal Café

This Dominican Brew From the Bronx May Be the Strongest Cup of Coffee in NYC | Eater NY

"A Bronx-based coffee company run by 25-year-old Dominican immigrant Héctor Carvajal, Don Carvajal Café launched in 2019 out of a University of Rochester class and operates mainly through pop-ups, farmers markets, and wholesale placements while Carvajal lives with his mother in a two-bedroom, $543-a-month Parkside public housing apartment. Carvajal describes his roast as “smoother than most, a lighter roast that’s nutty in scent and creamy in taste,” coffee you can drink black, and one of his most popular offerings is an oat-milk cold brew served in a glass jar with a stick of cinnamon as an homage to mamajuana. The brand punches above its modest Instagram following (about 6,177): Mayor Eric Adams singled it out at Coffee Fest—ordering an unsweetened almond-milk latte and calling it “a Dominican cup of coffee made in the Bronx”—Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso tweeted praise, critic Jeff Gordinier lauded the cold brew’s balance and flavor, and Rafael Espinal called it “the strongest cup of coffee in New York City.” I’ve observed the beans stocked in Harlem’s I Like It Black and Bushwick’s House Party Cafe, sold at the New York Botanical Garden farmers market and grocery stores in Astoria and Staten Island, included in corporate swag and gifts, and used in partnerships with Nike, TikTok, MasterCard and Oatly (which contributed $18,000). Carvajal has scaled roasting—working with Joe Coffee’s Long Island City roastery to produce as much as 550 pounds a day (roughly 11,200 12-ounce cups)—and secured investments including $37,000 from Marcus Lemonis, yet he has weathered major setbacks (a flooded Mount Vernon storage unit during Hurricane Ida, a Long Island City roasting-site fire, repeated break-ins of his delivery van, and a collapsed brick-and-mortar deal) and continues to confront systemic racism in the coffee industry even as his brew finds influential fans and growing institutional support." - Richard Morgan