DRIFTAWAY COFFEE
Photos by Austin Aubry
February 2025
“Yeah, let’s do some funky coffee,” Kevin replies.
Anu and Suyog begin preparing a three-part coffee tasting, a signature experience at Driftaway Coffee’s tasting room in Brooklyn, NY. The front room, where we’re gathered, is a thoughtfully repurposed space—once solely used for roasting and production, it now serves as a place for education and community as well.
Despite the cold, rainy February day outside, the front room is warm and inviting. Suyog focuses on preparing the first cup of our tasting experience. Meanwhile, Anu begins sharing the story of Driftaway Coffee, the small-batch roasting company she and Suyog founded, built on passion, experimentation, and a deep respect for coffee producers around the world.
MISSIONS & BEGINNINGS
Suyog serves our first coffee of the tasting — a washed Colombian coffee by Diego Bermudez, known as the "Lychee" process. The first sip is bright, juicy, and unmistakably tropical.
“This is the beginning of our funky flight because it starts to get funkier after this. Try it out, give it a smell,” Anu says, watching our reactions.
“Wow, it really does smell like lychee, almost like a candy” I say, inhaling deeply.
Anu nods, explaining that Bermudez is known for experimental processing, a field that Colombia leads globally.
Anu laughs: “Looking back at the start, we didn’t come from a coffee background, so the first hurdle was just learning everything—how to roast, taste, source, and run a business. We initially started roasting at home. Suyog had a full-time job, and I was launching Driftaway on the side.
We had this little home roaster, about the size of a microwave, just enough to experiment without making a huge investment. But we had no plan for marketing. We built the website, set everything up… and no one came. We had zero customers.”
Anu: “It was quite embarrassing, considering we both had marketing backgrounds!
Since this was 10 years ago, we started DMing anyone talking about coffee on Twitter. One of them was an early Tumblr employee.
We sent him an Explorer Box — five coffees, two light, one medium, and two dark. He tried it, loved it, and tweeted about it. Within hours, we had 200 subscribers. Not just one-time customers — subscriptions.”
Suyog: “And suddenly, we had a waitlist. Which, in hindsight, was a terrible idea because we had no production capacity. We were still roasting in our apartment, doing half-pound batches at a time. Then we had to let the machine cool for an hour before roasting again.”
Kevin: “Your apartment must have been an oven.”
Anu: “Oh yeah. We roasted from 7 AM to 1 AM, packed everything in our living room, and in the morning, Suyog would carry huge IKEA bags filled with coffee to USPS before heading to work.”
Anu: “At the time, there was only one shared roasting space in New York, out in Red Hook. We started small, renting a few hours a week, and gradually scaled up.”
Suyog: “In 2020, The pandemic changed everything. Suddenly, everyone needed coffee at home, and subscriptions exploded. We were lucky—that was already our model.”
Anu: “That’s when we knew it was time to buy our own roaster and move into our own space. We signed the lease in March 2021, expecting the roaster in six to eight months.”
Suyog: “Instead, it took 18 months, thanks to supply chain delays. But since 2022, we’ve been roasting here.”
Kevin: “Even coffee roasters have waitlists, like high-end espresso grinders.” The group laughs.
Anu: “Some of our very first customers are still with us today. That’s probably the most rewarding part—seeing it all come full circle.”
Kevin: “When you were first starting out, how did you go about building relationships with producers?”
Anu: “Similarly, we were really scrappy in the beginning. We got our coffee from home roasting websites—places like Sweet Maria’s, which is still a great resource today. But as we deepened our knowledge of coffee and the challenges producers face, we became much more intentional about where we source from.”
She gestures toward our second coffee, an anaerobic natural from India’s Ratnagiri Estate — a rare find in specialty coffee.
Anu: “For this one, we did our research, identified the producers we wanted to work with, and just emailed them. Since we were already visiting India, we asked if we could meet in-person. Sometimes we hear about producers through podcasts; other times, we taste something amazing from another roaster and trace it back to its source.”
SOURCING & SUSTAINABILITY IN A CHANGING WORLD
Kevin: “Like many other crops and commodities, climate change has significantly impacted coffee cultivation. What effects have you seen? Do you think any regions have become more suitable for coffee growing due to climate shifts?”
Anu: “We’ve definitely felt the impact. One major challenge is early rains, which often arrive before the coffee cherries are ready for harvest. This forces producers to scramble, affecting yield, timing, and overall production.
Right now, Guatemala is experiencing a drought, and it’s severely impacting coffee farming. That’s one reason global coffee prices are at an all-time high. It’s good for some producers income-wise, but it’s also a reflection of the struggles they’re facing.”
Suyog: “The biggest challenge is unpredictability. Every year presents new obstacles, making it harder for producers to plan. That’s where processing innovation comes in.
Anaerobic processing — and its variations — allows producers to take more control over the final outcome. This is one of the reasons we’ve moved beyond strictly clean, washed coffees. We’ve become more open to experimental processing as a way to adapt to climate-related challenges.”
Anu adds, “You’ll also notice that lower-elevation coffees—like our Indian anaerobic—require more processing to enhance their quality, while high-elevation coffees, like our Colombian and Ethiopian selections, naturally develop sweetness and complexity.
Processing has become a vital tool for producers to navigate uncertainty, allowing them to refine flavors and also improve cup scores. In this way, it has pushed the coffee industry to be more open-minded.”
FROM SUBSCRIPTION TO COMMUNITY
"Super light, floral… almost tea-like." Kevin savors the last coffee before shifting the conversation.
Kevin: “Why open a tasting room now? What excites you most about the future?”
Anu: “For nearly ten years, we’ve been direct-to-consumer, but unless someone was searching for an online coffee subscription, they wouldn’t find us. Last year, we started hosting community events when producers visited, and we realized how much we missed in-person connections.”
She gestures around the space. Through the curtain, we glimpse Driftaway’s roasting room, where stacks of green coffee beans line the walls and silent roasting machines remind us that this is still a working roastery, where coffee is roasted, packaged, and shipped daily.
Suyog: “Coffee culture has changed—during the pandemic, more people started brewing at home, experimenting with pour-overs and espresso. We wanted this space to serve both the coffee-curious and serious hobbyists.”
Anu: “There’s nowhere else in New York where you can sit down for a flight of pour-over coffees. We wanted to create that experience—where people can nerd out about coffee without the intimidation factor.”
Suyog: “Once people get into coffee, they realize how many variables—grind size, water, brewing method—affect the final cup. This space lets them experiment and learn.”
Kevin: “That’s amazing. Thank you for creating this space — it’s such a unique way to experience coffee.” He pauses, then adds, “Are there any coffee trends that excite you?”
Anu: “I’d love to see more roasting at origin countries, where producers retain more of the value. It would create a more balanced supply chain and lead to even more exciting coffees.”
Kevin: “I’ve always wondered why we don’t see more roasters in producing countries. It’s always American or European roasters—why not Colombia?”
Anu: “Exactly, but that’s starting to change. In the last few years, we’ve seen more specialty roasters in coffee-producing countries—Colombia, India, Mexico, Peru. As the middle class grows in these regions, so does the demand for high-quality coffee, and producers are now roasting and opening their own cafes. That’s something we want to highlight at Driftaway. We’re hoping to bring in guest roasters from origin countries in the next few months.
“Most coffee shops in the U.S. feature European roasters — Dutch, French, Nordic — which is great, but we’d love to showcase roasters from the places where coffee is actually grown.
They’re doing some of the most exciting work in the industry, and we want to be a part of that shift.”
Kevin: “If you were both stranded on a desert island and could only bring coffee from one roaster (not Driftaway) and one brew method, what would you choose?"
Suyog: “Hmm… I’d go with Thoughtful Coffee, a small roaster here in Williamsburg. Brian’s coffee has an incredible palate. For the brew method? V60 pour-over. We’re pretty committed to the V60 here at Driftaway.”
Anu: “Yeah, Brian’s stuff is great. I’d probably pick something from Florencia Fortunata in Peru — an all-women-produced coffee from Cusco. Beautifully roasted, hard to find, but so worth it.”
The conversation lingers in the air, much like the aroma of the coffees we’ve tasted. The tasting room at Driftaway Coffee isn’t just about trying new beans — it’s about stories, connection, and the ever-evolving world of coffee.
And as we leave, we know we’ll be back—ready for another cup, another conversation, and definitely some more funky coffee.
Huge thank you to Anu and Suyog, along with the entire team at Driftaway Coffee.
Driftaway Coffee is located at 85 Debevoise Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222, with its tasting room open
on Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 3pm.
Crystal Luo is a NYC-based food lover who spends most of her time eating and thinking about eating.
Austin Aubry is a NYC-based photographic artist whose work aims to reveal the full emotional saturation of each moment. The primary inquiry that guides his lens is not what is seen, but what is felt.