Everything about Kind coffee is strong.
Walk in and Doug Nicolaisen, Kind’s founder, will weave a coffee history lecture while pouring a cup beneath the old Persian carpets dangling overhead.
A scan of the shop reveals an artful collection of curios. A stuffed orangutan sat on a scratched leather couch under a portrait of Nicolaisen’s dog, near a Jerry Garcia-esque figurine on a vintage piano. Old Kind posters are nestled next to newspaper clippings and jarred maple syrup. Books and vases shared shelves below walls featuring street signs and abstract artworks.
But business has been dry for the funky oasis tucked within the brick warehouse on West Fayette Street, ever since a fire shut down the Kind Coffee Company three months ago.
In response, the community Nicolaisen has built proved it’s about as strong as his coffee.
Kind resumed normal hours Monday after raising nearly $9,000 from 88 donations — some people having donated multiple times. Nicolaisen’s old friend Kevin Brown organized the GoFundMe that Nicolaisen credits with keeping Kind alive.
“I would not have survived these three months, except for the generosity of my customers, and my suppliers, everybody up the chain, family, everybody,” Nicolaisen said. “Without them, I’d be really scrabbling for three months, because I’m a cash flow guy.”
A visit to the little shop with the big yellow sunrays radiating toward the entrance is not an ordinary coffee run.
Newcomers can expect an exuberant welcome from Nicolaisen and a booming bark from Koba, the aging, 140-pound Ovcharka lazing on a couch behind the counter.
Nicolaisen calls himself the “Coffee Nazi,” a reference to the infamous German soup-slinger in the classic Seinfeld episode. He’s even got a miniature figure of the Soup Nazi standing watch by the tip bowl.
He sticks to his idiosyncrasies. Nicolaisen insists customers who request cream and sugar first sip the black coffee. He asks customers to not leave before putting a lid on their cup to prevent burning spills.
A one-man dynamo, Nicolaisen’s coffee roaster is as impressive as the mad scientist wielding it.
The somehow stained stainless-steel behemoth looks like scrap metal thrown together. Like everything else in Kind Coffee, the roaster bears the marks of Nicolaisen’s do-it-yourself eccentricisms: a repurposed air filter which Nicolaisen scrapped from a car.
Customers streamed in and out throughout Monday morning, and Nicolaisen greeted his regulars like they were relatives.
One customer called Nicolaisen the “nicest guy,” and said Nicolaisen has taught him more about coffee than anyone else.
“You never know what conversation you’ll have here,” the customer said, “which is kind of the cool part about this place.”
He was happy to see Kind reopen, both for Nicolaisen, and for his own coffee consumption.
“I was lost. When it was closed, I didn’t know where to go for beans. I got spoiled with how good his beans were. Going to a place like Dunkin and getting the over-the-counter just wasn’t doing it for me,” the man said. “So as soon as I saw he was open, I had to come back down.”
New customers came, too, some driven by laudatory Reddit posts, another by curiosity.
Nicolaisen doesn’t accept card payments, and all three first-time customers didn’t immediately try to pay in cash. He offered to accept payment via Paypal, or to let the customers leave without paying and simply pay him back at the next visit.
When one customer asked Nicolaisen for oat milk, he explained that if customers don’t want Wegmans’ half-and-half, they can bring in their own mixer and leave it in the fridge for their own personal use at each visit.
Nicolaisen said that he’s had customers come in on their way to drop their kids off at college, who have returned a year later and paid him back for the previous coffee.
But if someone doesn’t pay for their past coffee, they can’t get a new cup.
“They’re amazed that I would let it go,” Nicolaisen said. “I don’t care if you pay me either. This’ll be the last great coffee you get – because I will remember.”
Doug credits that old-school, “cash is king” mentality with guiding a frugal business approach that has helped keep him in business for almost 30 years – but it’s also what made three months without steady income so alarming.
It’s easy to chalk up nearly $9,000 in donations to just a generous group of people helping someone in hard times. Nicolaisen himself loves to say that it’s not about him, it’s about the coffee.
But to Kind Coffee’s regulars, the draw appears to be a blend of both the man and the coffee beans he sells.
“I just was closed for 3 months. If I was mediocre, there’d be no reason to come back,” Nicolaisen said. “My core customers are unhappy, and they’re very happy now, and so I should see them all this week.”
Around noon, Nicolaisen greeted the most anticipated arrival of the day: a palette of new beans.
As the delivery driver came in to collect a signature, Nicolaisen zig-zagged about the store and offered the man a free cup of cold or hot coffee on the house. He launched into an explanation for why his cold coffee, not to be confused with cold brew, was going to be better than anything the driver usually drank.
“Awesome,” the driver said. “I’m going to need it.”
Eager to see a newcomer take their first sip of Kind coffee, Nicolaisen proudly prepared a cup of coffee “cold enough to break your tooth on.”
“Taste that,” Nicolaisen said, watching with gleeful anticipation. “That should be lusciously good, and full of caffeine.”
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