Newsday: Coffee Lobby among coffee businesses planning Long Island shops

by Tory N. Parrish

Consumers’ growing demand for more niche products and services — everything from a nightclub-lounge atmosphere to late-night closings to alcohol-infused coffee drinks — is helping to boost coffee sales. And small to midsize coffee businesses are driving much of the industry’s sales growth, experts said.

“We saw a gap between fast coffee and high-end cafes that feel unapproachable. Coffee Lobby was built for people who love coffee but also crave space — to think, connect, or just breathe. It’s not fast coffee, and it’s not pretentious coffee,” restaurateur Peter Kambitsis said via email about his coming Coffee Lobby shop.

The 1,800-square-foot shop will open around mid-May on the ground floor of the new the Langdon Lynbrook Station apartment complex across from the LIRR Station, he said.

Construction of the 201-apartment building was finished in June, said Kenneth Breslin, president of Garden City-based Breslin Realty Development Corp., which built the development in partnership with Fields Grade Development.

Coffee Lobby will feature an upscale look, with white marble walls from Greece, tile floors from Italy and furniture also from Europe, including white leather and cloth loungelike seating, Kambitsis said.

The shop will look like a European cafe, he said.

“If you go to Paris, this is what you see. If you go to Italy, this is what you see. If you go to Greece, this is what you see,” he said.

Coffee Lobby, which also will sell sandwiches and desserts, will have a full-service kitchen baking bread and pastries from scratch, he said.

Kambitsis owns six other eateries in New York, including Peruvian restaurant Pappa Gallo and Sugarberry Bakery Cafe in Rockville Centre, and New York Bakery Café in Astoria, Queens.

He plans to purchase wholesale coffee for Coffee Lobby from the same place he buys coffee for his other restaurants and bakeries — from For Five Coffee Roasters, a Queens-based chain with 17 coffee shops, including three on Long Island.

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