Holly Migliaccio and Shawn Kingsley tend to coffee beans roasting at their specialty coffee business, Rook Coffee Roasters in the Oakhurst section of Ocean Township. JACQUELINE HLAVENKA OCEAN TOWNSHIP — After spending more than 10 years in the corporate world, two eastern Monmouth County natives left the big city in pursuit of their shared passion — fresh roasted coffee.
Longtime friends and Shore Regional alumni Holly Migliaccio and Shawn Kingsley combined their marketing and finance backgrounds to launch Rook Coffee Roasters, an independent coffee shop featuring an in-house roaster where fair-trade and organic coffees are crafted from bean to cup.
“We are growing [our business] from here in Monmouth County,” said Migliaccio, of Highlands, who grew up in the area. “We have huge intentions. We want to go national. This is an incredible beginning for us. We’d like everything to spread out to Long Branch, Asbury [Park], Red Bank and Shrewsbury … we want to stay in this area and grow.”
The shop, established in January 2010 at 60 Monmouth Road in the Oakhurst section of the township, serves 10 different types of coffee ranging from light to dark roasts, all listed on a large chalkboard when customers enter the store.
“For our customers, … we recommend they have their coffee the way they normally have it,” Kingsley, ofAsbury Park, said. “If you have itwith half-and-half, have it with half-and-half. It depends on the person.”
Each cup of coffee at Rook is brewed fresh to order, which is a unique feature that sets the shop apart from other coffeehouses, Kingsley said .
The co-owners also work to educate customers about the different characteristics of coffee such as body, taste and tones, similar to a fine wine.
“Each coffee, we think, is very special,” Kingsley said. “The taste tones are subtle, but when you have it black, you can really taste it. One thing that people notice about our coffees is the body and acidity ratios. When you have the Yirgacheffe [blend], you have this balance with the acidity and low body. When you have the Sumatra [blend], it’s a heavy body like the way a heavy cream would sit on your palate versus skim milk.”
Before going to roast, the individual coffee beans start out as tiny green seeds that are placed into a hopper. The beans then fall into a rotating drum, where a gas-burning flame heats up the coffee beans.
Lighter roasts — such as the citrusy Costa Rican and the berry-like Ethiopian Harrar — are cooked for approximately 12 to 15 minutes, but darker roasts, such as the dark-chocolate Bali or the smoky Sumatra — are roasted for 18 minutes.
“Our milder roasts are in the drum for less time at a lower temperature and the darker roasts are in there longer,” Kingsley said. “We roast to the level that we feel highlights the coffee’s character the best. Our Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, we roast milder. If we roasted it darker, it wouldn’t taste right.”
When the beans are done roasting, they fall out of a chute into a cooling bin.
“We will then go and put them in a bin and wewill label them with a date so that if you buy beans from us … you know exactly when it was roasted,” he said.
Before opening up shop in Oakhurst, both Kingsley and Migliaccio took a road trip across the country to research different coffeehouses and roasting facilities to learn more about the specialty coffee business.
Migliaccio, formerly in sales and marketing withYahoo, andKingsley, formerlywithMorgan Stanley, left the daily grind for a different kind— coffee grinds.
“While I was working from home, I was going to school at Berkeley,” Kingsley said, who quit his job with Morgan Stanley in New York and moved to San Francisco, where he took a job that allowed him to work from home. “Iwas studying in coffee shops, and there are a lot of coffee shops that have in-house roasting. When you go into a coffeehouse, they are roasting right next to you. I would sit next to the guys who were working and you would just learn from them.”
After traveling through different coffee shops in NewYork City, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland — the coffee capitals of America — Kingsley said the team saw a market opportunity for roasted coffee at the Jersey Shore.
“Wewent to hundreds of different shops all over New York just researching and talking to people and learning about the industry,” he said. “We started roasting on our little coffee roaster, and eventually we started roasting on a coffee roaster that did half-pound samples and eventually got this bigger one.”
Migliaccio said the balance between her marketing skills and Kingsley’s financial background has “been wonderful.”
“We feelwe complement each other in skill set,” she said. “We’ve known each other since we were 10 years old. A lot of people stayed local, so a lot of old high school friends [come in] and know both of us.”
In addition to the retail shop in Oakhurst, Rookalso has a wholesale arm that supplies cafes and restaurants directly, as well an online store.
Rook’s clients range from Ocean Grove to Manhattan and Brooklyn, N.Y.
The co-owners promote the shop through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Currently, the co-owners are promoting a raffle for a free cup of coffee every day for six months.
“We are very community-centric,” Migliaccio said. “Over the holidays, we had a lot of people coming in [who were here] visiting their families. Now all of a sudden we are getting orders for the past few weeks for people that are fromIndiana, Texas, Chicago, Rhode Island … that business is starting to become its own little beast. It’s been fantastic.”
In addition to hot coffee, Rook also offers iced beverages. The shop’s signature cold drink is the New Orleans-style cold brew, crafted with Rook’s darkest roast of Sumatra and flavored with chicory, which adds dark chocolate notes.
“We brew it overnight in a mason jar and it becomes a coffee concentrate,” she said. “It brews overnight many, many hours in cold water. We then take the concentrate and we mix it with the water and milk and make a really nice low-acidic coffee drink. People say, ‘This isn’t iced coffee … what is this?’ It’s a whole new taste experience.”
Rook Coffee Roasters is located at 60 Monmouth Road, on the southbound side, near the intersection of Monmouth Road and West Park Avenue.