Variety Coffee Roasters — Bushwick

Variety Coffee Roasters was founded by Gavin Compton in 2008 on Graham Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — one of the first third-wave coffee shops to open in the borough. The name has charmingly accidental origins: an old sign reading "Cho's Variety" was already hanging on the original storefront, and the founders simply kept it. What began as a single neighborhood cafe has grown into nine locations across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, all built without major outside investment through disciplined, sustainable growth. Compton, who came from the restaurant industry, describes Variety as a "working man's coffee shop" — a place designed to serve everyone from freelancers and stroller-pushing parents to construction workers and students. The Bushwick flagship at 146 Wyckoff Avenue sits on a sunny corner at Wyckoff and Himrod, occupying a 1,200-square-foot former paint store — the building still bears the original "Wyckoff Paints Wallpaper" neon sign on its upper storeys. The interior was handcrafted with meticulous attention to material provenance: refinished exposed brick walls, reclaimed wood flooring shipped from a sewing factory in Alabama (where buttons and notions were found crammed in the floorboards' eyeholes during installation), a hand-built wooden bar, and a custom chandelier fabricated by Conant Metal & Light in Vermont. Windows line the corner space on two sides, filling the room with natural light and creating an inviting atmosphere for extended work sessions. The cafe is steps from the Myrtle-Wyckoff L and M train station, making it one of the most transit-accessible specialty coffee shops in Bushwick. Variety began roasting in-house at the back of the Bushwick cafe in 2014, and guests can still watch the roasting process through the shop. Roasting operations have since expanded to a dedicated roastery and training lab at 340 Stagg Street in East Williamsburg. Green coffee is sourced through Red Fox Coffee Merchants — a Berkeley, Oaxaca, and Lima-based importer committed to ethical, direct-trade sourcing — and the menu rotates seasonally to showcase only the freshest coffees from each growing region's harvest cycle. All Variety cafes use La Marzocco espresso machines, and select locations feature custom-built Officine Fratelli Bambi machines. Free WiFi and power outlets make the Bushwick location one of the neighborhood's most popular spots for remote work, with ample seating across two-top tables and communal surfaces. Variety has been named to Eater's "Best Coffee Shops in New York City" list, featured by La Marzocco as a cafe-of-the-month subscription partner, profiled by Sprudge, Honeysuckle Magazine, and Barista Magazine, and highlighted on the World Coffee Portal podcast. Beyond the Bushwick flagship, Variety operates cafes in Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Chelsea, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, the Financial District, and Ridgewood, Queens.