Matters Coffee, front house coffee counter. Photo courtesy of Matters Coffee.
Two Westchester natives fulfilled their dreams by opening Matters Coffee, a Westchester shop focused on premium beans and a perfect brew.
Trevor Ashley, owner and co-founder of Matters Coffee, and Jordan Garrett, co-founder, have been best friends for years. Over the past four, they’ve shared a mutual dream of opening a coffee shop.
“Let me know when you want to do this and we’ll do this,” Ashley recalls saying to Garrett.
Shortly after finding the perfect location in Croton-on-Hudson, Matters Coffee opened its doors. The Westchester java shop places an emphasis on only using premium coffee that is sustainable grown, responsibly sourced, and specialty grade.
The co-founders aim to provide their customers with the best of the best, from their morning coffee to the hospitality that comes with it. “Our process in making coffee is meticulous and focused. Making a quality cup of coffee is in the hands of our highly-skilled artisans,” says Ashley.
Once they receive their coffee beans from Costa Rica and Brazil, it’s in the baristas’ hands to maintain the quality of the coffee. “It’s a very thoughtful process,” says Trevor.
Matters Coffee will offer seasonal items like salted caramel iced coffee, which is the current best-seller, and s’mores iced lattes. If you aren’t a coffee drinker, the café is stocked with teas and frozen watermelon lemonade, the latter which is made with fresh blended watermelon.
Matters Coffee also stocks an assortment of baked goods from cinnamon buns and muffins to apple turnovers and croissants, which they receive from Rockland Bakery and Ossining Bakery nearby. Additionally, the shop serves up baked goods that Garrett made in her own kitchen. She’s a baker and had her home kitchen New York State certified in order to supply customers with homemade goodies.
When Matters Coffee first opened, it only took hours for the shop to be packed with customers after word got out on the Croton Facebook pages. Just like that, the café and lounge area was flooded. Two weeks later and the Matters team already knows regulars’ orders.
As far as finding the location, it took months of searching for the perfect storefront and figuring out the logistics, but 50 Maple Street in Croton seemed to call their name. Ashley and Garrett were driving by the space, which had windows covered by newspaper when Ashley asked, “Why don’t we do it there?” Within a week, the keys were in their hands, and Ashley was laying tape on the floor to map out where everything would go.
“This whole space was built around them [the customers], for them,” says Ashley about the shop’s interior design. Benches line the large windows that glance into the coffee bar. In the back sits a work bar stocked with outlets for laptops and phones, a table with chairs accompanying it, and two plush chairs with a sofa.
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Ashley and Garrett went through 19 different shades of gray to find the perfect match for their shop. The thin wood pallets that stretch from the ceiling to the floor were ripped out a few times to ensure they were straight. Now, they anticipate the local artwork that will soon hang from them.
The brand ethos lies right in the name, “Matters.”
“We value sustainable and responsibly sourced, specialty grade coffee — because it matters. We value the art of making coffee through a fine-tuned skillset and vast coffee knowledge — because it matters. We value and support our people and our community — because it matters,” says Ashley.
It’s clear that coffee is where the duo’s passion lies.
“It’s a dream come true, something we always wanted to do but also with the community we wanted to do it with,” Ashley notes.
50 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson