Home Delivery Coffee Service

New York Brooklyn Rides Out New Coffee drinking trends

Can you imagine a bike-riding gentleman crossing the road, finally knocking at your door, delivering a bottle of coffee and also retrieving the used empty bottles? This is a new, fashion trend created in New York. Four young men addicted to coffee and experienced in making coffee combined the ideas of coffee and bikes and established “Kickstand”. Riding their bikes with the coffee they have made, they put their dream into practice in Brooklyn and in some parts of Manhattan. Coffee delivery is different from instant coffee. Kickstand focuses on a slow process, providing customers with cold brew coffee, choosing different seasonal beans from the famous coffee shop Café Grumpy to keep the quality high. Unlike instant coffee, the coffee comes in 16 or 32 oz, and customers can order what they want and get it delivered, or they can visit Kickstand at their coffee stand to feel the new lifestyle of the New Yorker.

Amazing coffee + bicycle delivery = Kickstand.   It’s that simple, really.

Brought to you by Neal Olson and Aaron Davis, the Kickstand bikable coffee cart has taken care of lucky NYC coffee fiends the past year, and now delivers ready to drink cold-brew coffee concentrate straight to your door. It’s kind of like old-school milk delivery, but way better.

One of the top rated coffees as mentioned in TimeOut New York and Serious Eats, Kickstand now delivers, whether you live in New York or in California. When we heard that Kickstand was going national, our LA team was psyched to get the brew that Serious Eats calls “We Have A Winner!”

What makes Kickstand coffee different, you ask? Well, it’s not a run of the mill cup of joe from a street vendor or wannabe cafe. Kickstand coffee is cold-brewed from the best in-season Guatemalan and Nicaraguan beans selected with the expert help of NYC’s acclaimed Cafe Grumpy. While many coffee shops use mixed blends, Kickstand opts for single-origin beans which allows for delicious flavor customization (with new flavors available weekly). Did we mention its delivery? Major convenience factor doesn’t hurt.

The beans are brewed and filtered three times over a 24 hour period to achieve a perfect silky smooth and full bodied coffee concentrate. The Kickstand concentrate form allows you to dilute with water to your taste, so your cup can be mild, medium, or bold. The possibilities with coffee concentrate are endless…have your morning cup hot, mix an ice coffee in the afternoon, or serve it over desert or in a cocktail.

We mixed the Guatemalan Aragon concentrate in an ice coffee. Equal parts concentrate and filtered water, ice cubes, splash of cream, and simple syrup…this was some of the best coffee we’ve had to date.

Depending on your coffee addiction, sign up for the weekly delivery service and choose either a 16-ounce or 32-ounce bottle service. If you are trying to wean yourself off of caffeine (and for that we have no rational idea why), buy single bottles as you prefer. Once you’re done, your empty bottle will be picked up and a refill delivered on schedule.

Mmm, coffee never tasted so good.

If you’ve ever dreamt of two dashing young gentlemen arriving at your doorstep on bicycle and bequeathing you with some of Brooklyn’s finest single-origin coffee, then your prayers have officially been answered.  Aaron Davis and Neal Olsen are just two nice, Midwestern boys who share a lust for the caffeinated life.  Taking a cue from the milkmen of yore, they spend their Sundays and Mondays bike-mounted, delivering adorable bottles of cold brew concentrate to the city that never sleeps.

Along with Pete Castelein and Ben Schleif, they make Kickstand, a small business dedicated to providing quality coffee to New Yorkers with minimal environmental impact.  The four boys — all former or current baristas — first conceived of Kickstand while enjoying a lazy day in McCarren Park. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody just rolled up with an espresso machine on the back of their bike? Cue the lightbulb.

According to Neal, a traveling espresso machine is a “logistical nightmare,” so, when they familiarized themselves with the pour-over brewing method, they realized that bike + coffee =’s very simple, very realistic idea.

“It was an epiphany,” says Neal, “that we can serve quality coffee on the go, in the middle of a field if we wanted to.”  By perfecting the cold brewing process, the boys of Kickstand were able to create something magical and buzzworthy and take it to the streets, like the Doobie Brothers (of whom Neal’s dad is a huge fan).

Most remarkable is how they have eschewed tradition at every corner, coupling a totally unconventional business model with a self-described “analog” operation.  Having never purchased a single print or internet ad, Kickstand’s entire marketing strategy relies on Twitter and word of mouth.  While, in a charmingly mom-and-pop fashion, they hand-stamp all of the cards attached to the bottles they deliver.  With a sheepish smile, Aaron says, “There’s a lot of care that goes into this.”

Though they do not have firmly delegated positions within the company, Aaron says that segmented roles are beginning to emerge.  “Ben is the builder,” he says, referring to Ben Schleif who engineered Kickstand’s coffee cart that makes appearances at Artists & Fleas.

“Pete is the idea man,” Neal adds.  “He’s a mad coffee genius.”

Both Neal and Aaron are quick to point out that Kickstand would in no way be possible without their friends.  “Friends are important,” says Ben, “because if there’s something you can’t do, someone you know should be able to.”

It’s with tremendous pride that they call Kickstand’s operation “super collaborative.”

“There’s nobody on our team that’s a salesperson,” says Aaron.  And yet, they run a very successful business and have attracted the attention of such respected rags as New York Mag and the SundayTimes (and, of course, us.)

While Aaron and Neal both still technically hold down “day jobs,” there is a lot happening on the Kickstand horizon that they are very excited about.  They are hoping to introduce some local mixologists to their cold brew and have it incorporated into cocktails.  They are also working on a joint promotion with fashion website Refinery 29 that involves the boys making coffee deliveries “dressed as gentlemen.”

When asked if they have a special sort of female following, Neal replies, “Not yet.  Though, maybe after the Refinery 29 thing we will.”

We ask: Will you be wearing bowties? 

They nod.

Oh yea, boys.  Board up your windows.

– Margaux Weisman

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Kickstand Single Origin Cold Brewed Coffee Concentrate:

Info: A luxe concentrate meant for diluting and made with in-season beans roasted at Cafe Grumpy. Sixteen oz. makes 5 cups and 32 oz. makes 10 cups when concentrate is mixed with equal parts milk or water.

How to get it: Sold at Murray’s Cheese Shop (254 Bleecker St., New York, NY 10014), The Brooklyn Kitchen (100 Frost St., Brooklyn, NY 11211), Eastern District (1053 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11222), Di Bruno Brothers (930 S. 9th St., Philadelphia, PA 19147) or order at kickstandbrooklyn.com, free shipping on all orders with 2 or more bottles

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This is turning into the summer when New York’s flirtation with cold-brew coffee became a hopeless romance, or maybe a desperate obsession. Coffee made by letting grounds and cool water steep overnight was nearly impossible to find in the city as recently as 2008; now it’s sold in growlers, tapped in Queens, plied at a pushcart on the High Line and swigged from stubbies on the sidewalk outside the Ace Hotel.

Kickstand, the bikable coffee cart that started pedaling around Brooklyn last year, is getting into the cold-brew game. And the owners are playing to their iron-calved advantage: they deliver.

First, the coffee. The Kickstand crew cold-brews every week with beans selected and steeped at the Café Grumpy mothership in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. While many cold-brew coffees are made with blends, Kickstand favors single-origin beans. (This week’s picks: Santa Teresa from Nicaragua and Desarrollo Co-op from Colombia.) And while many cold-brew coffees are offered as a ready-to-drink product, Kickstand sells a cold-brew concentrate that you dilute to taste.

There’s a practical reason for the concentrate — the compact bottles are easy to deliver. It’s also a nod to the coffee traditions of New Orleans, where cold brewing has been a summer staple for generations and where you can find commercial concentrate on theshelves of most supermarkets.

Second, the transaction. The 16-ounce bottles are delivered Sundays and Mondays to a handful of Brooklyn neighborhoods (Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Greenpoint, Williamsburg) and Manhattan between Canal Street and 34th Street. You place orders on the Kickstand Web site.

A 16-ounce bottle of concentrate that will yield 32 ounces of iced coffee is $11, plus a $3 bottle deposit, plus a $4 delivery fee. It adds up. But the math evens out if you order two or more bottles at a time and trade in your empties.

Besides, you don’t have to turn cold-brew concentrate into cold-brew coffee. Neal Olson, one of the founders of Kickstand, is excited about “opening up some of those weird coffee consumption channels.” Cocktails, desserts. Maybe soups, salads. “There’s no shortage of possibilities,” Olson said.

Though you might want to start off with a sure thing, like granita: mix together simple syrup with concentrate, freeze, scrape with a fork, serve with a snap of just-whipped heavy cream. It’s Rome in a frosted cup by way of Brooklyn — exactly right for a New York summer.

Kickstand cold-brew coffee concentrate, $11 for a 16-ounce bottle (plus additional costs for bottle deposit and delivery fee). Go to kickstandbrooklyn.com.

By Oliver Strand

Just launched is Kickstand’s iced coffee concentrate program – offering home delivery of their iced coffee concentrate by bicycle. “We realized the shelf-life of the concentrate alone is much longer than it is after you cut it with water. And it makes sense because people can keep it in their fridge and mix it with the proportions they like—if they want to mix it with water or cocktails or however they plan on using it. That’s kind of the fun of it, is that there are lots of ways to use the concentrate,” Davis said.

Each of the Kickstanders lives in a different area of Brooklyn—Williamsburg, Bushwick and Brooklyn Heights—and meet in the middle, Café Grumpy, their home base and after-hours brewing station. Grumpy sources and roasts all of its own coffee in the roastery in the back of their Meserole Avenue location; Kickstand uses their beans, exclusively.

The four partners take turns delivering sixteen-ounce bottles of their iced coffee concentrate on Sundays and Mondays. They also pick up empty Kickstand bottles for re-use as part of their bottle exchange program. In addition to Greenpoint, they deliver to neighborhoods bike-able from Grumpy—including Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bed Stuy, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Manhattan between Canal and 34th Streets. They ship bottles too, and have received requests from places as far away as Korea and Mexico City.

Like many successful ideas, Kickstand started as an inside joke before it turned serious. The three original Kickstand members – Schleif joined later – were working at coffee shops, immersed in caffeinated thoughts ‘round the clock. “We had this joke about trying to get an espresso machine on the back of a bicycle and being able to make espresso in McCarren Park. We were like, ‘How amazing would it be if someone biked up with an espresso machine on a bicycle and was just making us coffee?’ Because at that point we were in the park and lazy and didn’t want to go to a coffee shop,” Davis said. That winter, they mapped out their mobile coffee stand idea; and last summer, the iced coffee program was born.

The carts that became so well-known and beloved last summer will still make an appearance this year (though re-fabricated versions). But rather than selling coffee, the Kickstand boys will be selling the home delivery service and offering samples of the iced coffee on which they have been focusing their energies. “The response to the iced coffee program so far has been great, and we’re definitely looking forward to getting more of the word out,” Davis said.

As they spread the word about their new offerings, they are looking at the bigger picture: hiring more messengers, expanding their market outside of New York and hopefully, eventually quitting their day jobs. “There are definitely prospects of being able to deliver more iced coffee, and to make enough where it can sustain a business. It’d have to be a lot of iced coffee, and we’d have to deliver it to a lot of people!” Davis said. He added, “But right now we’re trying to keep it local and gauge what we’re able to do between the four of us, and then go from there, start small.”

For now, you can get it by the bottle at Brooklyn Kitchen and Eastern District in Greenpoint, by the cup at 61 Local in Cobble Hill and, of course, via home delivery. For more information, check out their Web site: kickstandbrooklyn.com. And for regular updates on their whereabouts and products, follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/kickstandcoffee.

by Jesse Sposato

Kickstand Cold Brew Concentrate

Don’t chug this one no matter how pretty it is—Brooklyn-based bike baristas Kickstand have offered up a more long-term solution to the cold coffee problem: a take-home concentrate you can keep in the fridge and decant with whatever proportions of cold water or dairy you like most. (Oh, and if you live in the right geographic vicinity, they’ll just bike a fresh bottle to your house each week.) Using professional grade Filtron drippers and in-season beans roasted by their friends at Cafe Grumpy, each handsomely tagged Kickstand cold brew bottle lets you know not only how to drink it but what you’re drinking—a level of transparency and pride in which kind of cold coffee you’re actually drinking that’s suspiciously absent in most preparations. Their version of the Guatemalan El Limonar is supremely fruity, with a little soft chocolate, and can be enjoyed for up to 14 days in the privacy of your own home. It’s super floral and their brew retains the brightness inherent in this coffee without any of that stale taste cold brews are so prone to. We have a winner! Now if only they could bike nationwide.

Available at The Brooklyn Kitchen or have it personally delivered by bicycle in New York City.

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Thanks @jenniletibryant!