Roasting Up the Love at Coffee Labs in Tarrytown: Westchester’s Local Coffee Shop

Mike Love, Coffee Labs Owner, Photo Credit: Anthony Deleon

Open the door to Coffee Labs Roasters on Main Street in Tarrytown, step in, and smile because you realize right away that you are in a legit local coffee shop.  Patrons fill up the place, seated here and there, reading and working the keyboards of their laptops.  Baristas bustle behind the counter; deftly creating all sorts of award-winning artistic coffee concoctions as steam bursts out of the La Marzocco espresso machine. 

A chalkboard hangs over-head, colorfully listing the crazy amount of beverage options; from coffee drinks to espresso drinks, frozen blended drinks to smoothies. Beautiful pastries from local bakeries fill a display case on the counter and art by local artists decorate the walls where flyers for live performances (they have live music every Friday and Saturday night) aren’t posted.  The constant hum of a professional grade, sticker-clad coffee bean roaster mixes with the chatter of coffee-sipping patrons and fills the place with the pleasant aroma of roasting coffee.  

Coffee Labs is everything you want a local coffee shop to be and then some.  And they’ve been doing it right for almost two decades. They’re a Westchester institution and a name synonymous with good coffee. We had an opportunity to sit down with Mike Love, who owns Coffee Labs with his wife Alicia, to discuss the business and its relationship with Westchester.

The mantra at Coffee Labs is: Grown Globally, Roasted Locally.  And what becomes clear right off the bat is that while Mike may have a pretty relaxed attitude about most things, he takes two things very seriously: coffee and community.  Mike emphasizes the importance of buying at origin (industry jargon for the growing regions) and creating relationships with the farmers themselves.  He spends significant time every year travelling to farms in South America and Hawaii, staying on the properties with the farmers and their families (check him out on social media), and even hosts farmers in his own home from time to time, giving them the opportunity to see the final products their beans ultimately create.  For Mike, his constant travelling and relentless curiosity and passion is what allows Coffee Labs to constantly be changing and evolving; being at the forefront of all the new trends and innovations happening in the world of coffee. And through these travels and the relationships that Mike has been able to establish, Coffee Labs is not only able to provide their customers here in Westchester with high quality, great tasting coffee, but they are able to make a real positive global impact by buying directly from small, family-operated, community-oriented, sustainable-practicing farms which, in turn, allow these farms to pay their workers fair wages.  

 Mike’s emphasis on community doesn’t end with the purchasing of coffee beans.  He boasts proudly that Coffee Labs is “ours, but we manage it for Tarrytown”. He speaks of getting to know regulars over the years, first dates that have turned into marriages, little kids growing up in front of his eyes.  And Mike understands the role that Coffee Labs plays in the community. An authentic local coffee shop is something that people treasure, it’s something that people want, and maintaining that is what motivates Mike and Alicia to continuously seek out the newest and the best within the ever-changing world of coffee. 

With the influx of corporate, big name coffee shops in Westchester over the past 20 years, Coffee Labs has stood strong; staying true to its roots and continuing to not only provide Westchester with great tasting, high quality coffee, but to provide Westchester with something so many of us want: an authentic, local coffee shop.  In the end, what sets Coffee Labs apart is passion. As Mike says: “ If you don’t love what you do, you’re just spinning wheels”.   

For more info about Coffee Labs, check out their website at: https://www.coffeelabs.com/

Or check them out on Instagram: @coffeelabs1_

To see Ahead of the Trend’s interview with Mike Love of Coffee Labs Roasters and other exciting content, click here.