Brewing More Than Coffee: Hampton Coffee Company Expands to Hampton Bays With a Heart for Community

Jason and Theresa Belkin’s passion for brewing world-class coffee may be matched only by their passion for supporting the communities where they sell that coffee.

On January 25, the Belkins opened their seventh Hampton Coffee Company espresso bar and café, this one on Shinnecock Road in Hampton Bays, where Pete’s Green Door used to be.

Jason Belkin said he’s been looking for the right spot to open a café in Hampton Bays for 10 years.

“Hampton Bays is the most populous hamlet in the Hamptons,” he said. “A lot of our customers live here and work farther east, so they wake up and they stop at our stores in Southampton or Water Mill on their way to work. And half our staff lives in Hampton Bays. So it made sense to open a store here.”

Their grand opening drew a bigger crowd than Jason dared hope for. “We raised money for the Friends of the Library in Hampton Bays, and everybody got a free drink,” he said. “We gave away 560 free drinks. It was more than double what we thought would come.

“The next day we were just as busy. I’m so proud of that. You always wonder when any new business opens, is anyone going to show up?”

To anybody who knows the Belkins, the fact that they used their grand opening to raise funds for the library isn’t a surprise.

“Our mission statement is to be part of the community,” Jason Belkin explained. “We’re in every school district and every library in communities where we have a store. There are over 100 different organizations that we support every year, and not just with money. We show up and give out hot cocoa at tree lightings.

“Each spring, we have kids from Westhampton Beach High School’s business class work on a project with our marketing manager, Edythe Collins. They strategize with her and their teacher and then submit hot coffee cup designs and models to us. We pick three that most tell the story of HCC and our community and get them professionally produced. We then use these for a few months at the Westhampton Beach Café.

“We don’t donate to national causes — it’s always local things that affect our community. That’s our thing. We love helping and doing things.”

One of the local businesses benefiting from Hampton Coffee is the South Fork Bakery, founded in 2016 to offer meaningful employment for adults with disabilities. “They usually do our seasonal things, like pumpkin blondies, and our biscotti. I think we’re one of their biggest customers now,” Jason Belkin said proudly.

“I heard recently that for every dollar spent at a local business, 68 cents stays in the community,” he added. The Hampton Coffee business model clearly works toward that goal. “Our landlords are always local people, so the rent is staying here. All our employees live here, there are no stockholders in Seattle who need to get a cut of this. It really is all staying here.”

Later this year, Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton will open a café featuring coffee provided by Hampton Coffee Company.

Jason Belkin’s history with the company goes back to its earliest days. His family summered in Montauk and would stop for treats at the flagship Water Mill cafe on their way home after it opened in 1994. In 1995, he worked there as a barista during his last year of college.

In 1999, he and Theresa bought the business from founder Ellen Steinlauf.

“It’s amazing how far the coffee business has come,” he said. “When I worked there in ’95, I would have to explain to customers what a latte was, or why the coffee wasn’t free with a bagel, like it was at the deli. Now a 10-year-old knows what a latte is.”

Belkin says he still has some customers he knew from his early barista days, and “we have people who’ve come in every day for 20 years.

“One customer in particular, Frank Spungen, came in every morning. He was a Water Mill customer who owned a factory in Pennsylvania, and he came in and critiqued the French Roast, every day. In a good way, not an annoying way — but every day, literally for years.

“So when he passed in 2010, we asked his wife, Debbie, who was also a customer, if she’d mind if we named that coffee after him, and it’s been Frank’s French Roast ever since.”

Unlike larger coffee chains, where coffee beans are roasted, ground and packed in large factories, Hampton Coffee is all small-batch. “We have glass doors in our Southampton store, and you can see Oscar and Andres, our roast masters, roasting the coffee.”

The roaster’s capacity is 50 pounds, and Belkin explained that each batch takes 35 minutes to roast. “We hand-pack it and seal it,” he said, “then we deliver it in our own trucks. The only technology we use is the printer for the labels. It’s all done by hand — that’s what makes really good coffee.”

Asked about his coffee’s origins, Belkin said, “We get our coffee from everywhere. Colombia and Brazil are big suppliers, and Tanzania, in Africa. We get our organic coffee from Peru.”

Hampton Coffee offers an extensive coffee menu, including both single-origin coffees and blends. “With the single origin, you really experience what it tastes like,” he said. “But you might think the Peru is good, but maybe a little too light, and the Colombia is good, but maybe a little too much. A lot of our blends are two, three, four different beans. Then you get the best of all of them.”

In addition to coffee, each store offers a broad range of food items, from freshly baked muffins and egg sandwiches to the Happy Wrap, a copyrighted vegetarian creation that includes beans, vinaigrette, cheese and avocado.

A refrigerated truck heads out every morning at 5 a.m. to deliver food from the Water Mill store to the other six locations, and each of those spots also has an in-house oven where baked goods are made fresh daily.

“We have the usual coffee house menu — soups and salads and sandwiches — but also Mexican grill, hamburgers and turkey burgers, veggie burgers, soups, fish tacos. And we always have specials. The Water Mill location has turned into a full-service restaurant in the summer, with around 100 seats, inside and outside.”

The company also has a mobile unit, a Mercedes Sprinter van with a full espresso bar so employees can offer the same drink menu as customers can get in a store. Jason Belkin explained that the van is used about 50 percent for paid catering — real estate open houses, wedding breakfasts — and the other 50 percent for charity. “We do tons of events with it in the summer,” he said. “We’re at the Children’s Museum, the South Fork History Museum, lots of places.

“I’m also really proud that we’re a year-round business,” he said. “I’m always very negative toward businesses that don’t stay open year-round. It’s not fair to just come in the summer, take all the money and leave. The community doesn’t close down, and people still need help in the winter.

“There are a few community stalwarts, like us and the Golden Pear, and we’re at everything. We’re the ones keeping everybody working, we’re the ones doing all the charity events and donations.

“We’re not perfect, but we try, and we feel really fortunate that we can afford to give back.”