Coffee Shop Inside a Car Showroom: field study coffee

A $40 cup of coffee? Of course, “yes!” if we are talking about a new trendy coffee shop ~~in New York City~~ in Brooklyn.

field study coffee is a new trendy coffee shop designed to make it difficult to get into:

it has no sign, so when walking past car garages and auto repair shops, you would not even realize that behind the blank facade of a former warehouse, there is a place that would be happy to welcome you, let alone serve you coffee;
the coffee shop operates strictly by reservation.

The main feature is that the coffee shop is located inside the Car Part Time car showroom, so several collectible cars are always parked in the bare-concrete interior.

Interestingly, a lighting fixture by Edward Durell Stone hangs above each parking space, taken from the campus of the State University of New York in Albany.

He is the same architect who designed the PepsiCo headquarters, which I recently wrote about. Another nice detail is a listening station with records collected by Freakout Spot.

The founders of field study coffee are four men from the industry: Norberto Peña (roaster at Obscure Coffee), Lior Weissbrod (co-founder of Three Legged Cat), Bobby Marcione, and Danny Toro, the 2024 United States AeroPress Champion.

Therefore, everything is uncompromisingly technical. There are two espresso machines: a La Marzocco GS3 for classic shots at six bars and a Decent for a Slayer-style pressure profile. Option-O grinders with different burrs are used for espresso and filter coffee. The only filter method is the Hario V60 Neo. And, fundamentally, there is no batch brew: every serving is ground and brewed separately. Moreover, this year the guys also switched to roasting their own coffee.

But I forgot to mention the detail that is far more shocking than a $40 cup of coffee: the establishment is completely GRATUITY-FREE, or, in other words, you are not asked to add a 20–30% tip. The main reason is that the only people currently working at field study coffee are the founders themselves, and they can afford to be satisfied with your modest $40.

But if we put the irony aside (I wrote about special and expensive coffee varieties here), it is a very pleasant and very slow-paced place, so you will enjoy it if you come there to savor the taste of coffee without rushing.

In terms of atmosphere, the coffee shop is pure Bushwick, despite its actual location in East Williamsburg.