When Kenny and Zanetta Kok expanded their coffee roasting business, Kitty Town Coffee, to include a cafe in Lebanon, they weren’t planning to expand their family, too.
But now, after the birth 10 months ago of their daughter Aly, the couple says they have decided to shutter the cafe and concentrate on their family and roasting business, both of which take up plenty of their time. Zanetta Kok announced the decision on Facebook on Thursday.
Consequently, the Sydney Roasting Co. at 722 Quentin Road was planning to close its doors for the last time at 4 p.m. Sunday, Kok told LebTown on Friday.
Coffee addicts and connoisseurs alike shouldn’t worry, however; Kok said another cafe will open in its place later this year.
Meanwhile, she said, the decision to close the business – which moved to the plaza on Quentin Road in October 2021, less than a year after first opening at 12 N. Ninth St. – wasn’t easy.
“We want to be able to focus on family. We also have the roasting business, which has been going really well,” Kok said. “We want to put all of our time and attention it to that, to help it grow.”
Aly, who was burbling happily nearby during a telephone interview Friday, has not yet developed a coffee addiction, Kok said with a laugh. “Not yet,” she joked. “I figure after a year we’ll try decaf.”
Customers of the cafe “are sad” about the closure, Kok said. “We’ve got a lot of well wishes,” she added. “People are surprisingly understanding that we made the decision. But they’re excited that there will still be a cafe, and they’re still going to sell our coffee. So it won’t be too big of a change.”
She and her husband hope to expand Kitty Town in the near future, she noted, adding products such as K-cup coffee pods and organic beans to their offerings. “We have lots of different ideas,” she said.
Kitty Town Coffee, which started roasting coffee beans in 2017, earned some good will in the community in early 2020, when the Koks began sending out free bags of coffee beans to people in need during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sydney Roasting Co. has been a participant in the Java Journey, Visit Lebanon Valley’s annual coffee trail through Lebanon County. Besides coffee, the cafe’s menu featured breakfast sandwiches, quiches, and pastries.
Kok told LebTown in 2021 that she first started roasting “as a hobby on popcorn poppers in my garage” before moving the roasting operations to the former Bethlehem Steel plant on Lincoln Avenue in 2019. Kitty Town blends were named after cats she knew, she said at the time, and each bag sold feeds a homeless cat at a local animal shelter for a week.
She said she will definitely miss having one-on-one interactions with patrons at the cafe.
“I loved hearing direct feedback from the customers,” Kok said. “You’re standing in front of the person as they’re taking a sip of your coffee.” In fact, she said, even negative reviews of the cafe online often had “but the coffee is excellent” as an addendum, she added. “And we’ve gotten a lot of confidence from that.”
So, who’s taking over?
Kok said they are handing the reins to the Clay House Cafe, which will likely open at the site later this summer.
Finding new owners proved to be easier than they expected.
“They were actually our very first wholesale customer,” she said. “They run a bed and breakfast and a mobile coffee bar, doing coffee at events. And they’ve been using our coffee pretty much since we started. We had a good relationship, so we reached out to them … we knew that starting a cafe was on their bucket list.
“To our surprise, they said yes. We feel really good about that. They’re definitely going to be able to take care of our customers.”
Kok said the cafe has been operating with just two full-time and two part-time employees, besides her and her husband. Any of their employees who want to continue working for them will be offered positions at Kitty Town, which currently has six employees, although she said they might also want to apply to stay on at the cafe when it reopens.
Kitty Town Coffee is sold at grocery stores, gift shops, cafes, and online.
Meet the new owners
The new owners of the site are Seth and Mary Martin, who already run the Clay House bed and breakfast in Stevens, Lancaster County, and a catering business with mobile coffee bar that does events mostly in Lebanon, Lancaster and York counties.
Taking over the Sydney Roasting Co. was “definitely a unique opportunity,” Mary Martin said. “We’ve worked with Kenny and Zanetta for about five years. We have a good relationship with them, we trust them. And it’s a bit of a dream for us to have a cafe.”
“How convenient for us to already have our catering business already established? … We love gourmet food as much as we love gourmet coffee.”
They will continue serving “the same great coffee,” she said. “And we’ll be increasing the breakfast and lunch menu and improving the aesthetics.”
The Martins plan to redecorate, bringing in more green and natural wood tones that reflect their B&B, which has four themed rooms: rustic, eclectic, farmhouse and bohemian. “We’re bringing all of those four styles in a cohesive way,” Mary Martin said. “There will be aspects that reflect all four rooms.”
She said they want the new establishment “to be a place where people want to come in, sit down and enjoy. We’re putting in a kids’ corner, so parents can sit down and chat.”
The business will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, she added. The facility also will be available to rent for special events in the evenings, she said.
Seth Martin said he grew up in Lebanon County, so it’s “familiar territory” for him. He said they like the location because it’s an established cafe, right off Route 72 in “a busy area of Lebanon.”
“It was an opportunity that presented itself,” he said. “We’re hoping to make it even better.”
The Martins plan to open Clay House Cafe by the end of August or in early September, he added.
Staffing is still “up in the air,” Mary Martin noted, but they will probably employ four to six people on site. She said she and her husband will continue to operate the B&B and catering businesses and will continue preparing the food that will be sold there, but another couple will handle day-to-day management of the cafe.
“We want people to feel they are welcomed and loved here,” she said. “That’s our overall passion.”
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