Art of Business: The Grounds Keepers

Muddy Cup

by Ann Braybrooks and photographs by Jennifer May, March 29, 2007

In 2001, while living on Staten Island, business partners Jim Svetz and Brian Woodward weren’t interested in opening a little coffeehouse in a trendy neighborhood. They wanted a large place, near home, with plenty of seating where customers could “just kick back and relax,” says Svetz.
At the time, they would have fallen off their chairs if anyone suggested that they might open a second Muddy Cup coffeehouse, or a third. Yet by this summer, there will be nine Muddy Cups in New York state. Most have been embraced by the communities in which they have been established. One, in New Paltz, has stirred up some controversy.

When the partners established their first coffeehouse downstate, says Svetz, “I guess I was creating something for myself. I didn’t really research a lot. I wasn’t trying to copy Starbucks or anybody else. We just created our own vision. Of course, we didn’t invent coffeehouses. Neither did Starbucks. Coffeehouses have been around for hundreds of years. We put our own comfort level to it.”
In June 2001, Svetz had been laid off as marketing director of a dot-com that had required him to fly 125,000 miles per year and to commute three times a week to Manhattan from his home on Staten Island. While unemployed, and wondering what to do next, he remembered a vacant building in his neighborhood. “The North Shore of Staten Island is very old, and it was economically depressed. There was an old bakery building that I walked by every day. It had been vacant for at least five years. It was really cool inside. It had beautiful mosaic tile floors, tin ceilings…I convinced the owner to rent it to me.”