At the new RocketCup roastery and “speakeasy” in the Village of Cattaraugus in Western New York. All images courtesy of RocketCup Coffee.
After months of counting down, RocketCup Coffee is taking off with a new roastery and “speakeasy” concept at its home in the small Western New York village of Cattaraugus.
Downstairs from the existing RocketCup cafe in the heart of the village, guests are treated to roasting workshops and tastings, fresh cafe fare during the day and a “speakeasy” menu at night, including beer, wine and cocktails.
The menus lean heavily on locally produced items, supporting RocketCup’s ongoing mission to support business development and revitalization in small communities in Western New York and beyond.
RocketCup Head Roaster Seth Orgel started seasoning a new 15-kilo Mill City Roasters machine over the summer, after previously carrying out the company’s roasting on an identical machine owned by Steamworks Coffee in nearby Lockport.
The new RocketCup roaster.
The roaster now sits prominently in the corner of the downstairs space, which is visually warmed by mellow lighting and the wooden bar, tables and chairs.
An onsite kitchen allows for fresh breakfast and lunch fare, and by evening the menu changes to flatbreads, salads and pub snacks that play well with local craft beer, a selection of wine and cocktails made with locally produced spirits.
RocketCup Co-Owners Tom Cullen, MacKenzie Bush and Steve McClain all were born and raised in Western New York. Cullen is the founding director of the St. Bonaventure University Entrepreneurship Center, which is where he met Bush, and the three are also partners in the Laine Business Accelerator Program in Olean, New York.
“We’ve run 30 businesses through it, the businesses have created hundreds of jobs,” Cullen recently told DCN. “We continue to run it to this day, and it’s all part of the revitalization.”
The trio started the business accelerator in 2021, about two years after Cullen returned to New York from Chicago where he worked in the financial software industry and spent six years as CEO of LaunchPad Lab, a Chicago-based web development studio he co-founded. In Chicago, Cullen discovered a passion for specialty coffee while visiting cafes from companies such as Dark Matter Coffee and Intelligentsia Coffee.
RocketCup launched in New York as a wholesale roasting company in 2022. The Cattaraugus cafe location opened in October 2023 and was followed by a second cafe in Olean this may.
According to the RocketCup owners, five other businesses have opened in the Village of Cattaraugus since first cafe opening. The coffee company also offers what it calls “spark grants” — $1,000 micro grants — to organizations at home and farther afield, even in places where coffee is produced.
Cullen said one recent grant went into a coffee-producing community in Ecuador from which RocketCup aspires to one day source green coffee. The grant was for school computers.
Said Cullen, “We believe revitalization comes when you give people just a little bit of a spark and bring people together, which is why coffee is really the thing that we think is the best vessel for this type of revitalization.”
With its new facility fully ignited, RocketCup is hoping to thrust forward at full speed.
“We’re looking to just continue to expand,” said Cullen. “I’m not sure what that’ll look like from a cafe standpoint, but certainly growth on the wholesale side and in projects that will take us into communities that are thirsting for revitalization.”
RocketCup Coffee Roastery & Speakeasy is located at 18 N Main St. in Cattaraugus. Tell DCN’s editors about your new coffee shop or roastery here.
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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