Some Yalies (students and alums of Yale) may ask: What about the historic Atticus Bookstore Cafe, located at 1082 Chapel Street and already a shared memory for many generations of Yalies. It turned out Atticus was founded initially just as a small independent bookstore in 1975. Atticus only began to have coffee and food services at its same-location bookstore until 1981.
There are some other bookstore/café type of shops in New Haven. Given their limited seats and choices of food and beverage, many locals still view them more as bookstores than professional cafes.
What about those big brands like US coffee chain giant Starbucks? Starbucks came to New Haven first in 2004 to open the branch on the corner of Chapel and High streets, which is still open for business to this day. It later added another branch also on Chapel Street in 2018.
Maybe for economic reasons, unlike in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts, home state for prestigious universities like Harvard and MIT, New Haven hasn’t really seen strong interests from national café brands apart from Starbucks. One of my new favourites for coffee in the US is Bluestone Lane, which has shops in Boston and Washington DC. Harvard students also like to go to Blue Bottle for coffee, originally from Silicon Valley and now also in Cambridge, just few blocks from the landmark Harvard Square.
There was very little information left on the Internet about Daily Caffe, which was once upon a time one of the “most popular three” in New Haven and located at 316 Elm Street. According to a report by The New York Times dated October 23, 1994, the Daily Caffe regularly held poetry readings and art exhibits that attracted a crowd of devoted patrons, many wearing the latest in grunge, crunch or bohemian black.
Amid the din of espresso machines and Pearl Jam, one of the co-owners of Daily Caffe, Steve Shapiro, commented on the growing trend for coffee in New Haven at that time: "Lately, there's a sense that New Haven is starting to go in the right direction.”
That was 1994. A nice coffeehouse apparently proved to have some good social impact on the local people and community.
Let’s go back to the history about Koffee?. Did anyone hear there was in fact a second Koffee? branch at York Street? Yes, it was called Koffee Too?. And yes, the branch name also contained the question mark in its brand.
In early 2000 Yale approached the lovely couple owner of Koffee?, Lee and Tracy Jackson. Yale asked them if they would be interested to take up the space at 276 York Street, which was formerly occupied by Willoughby’s. The couple owner said yes and then “Koffee Too?” was quickly born on that location.
