Happenstance brought Kim McCleery, formerly of Yonkers, to upstate coffee shop ownership.
Last January, McCleery, 36, took over Stamford Coffee at 79 Main St. in Stamford.
“I bought an existing business, that I purchased from the last owner, Julian Fisher, who is a wonderful human being but has no background in food,” she said. “He is a performer and musician, but this was his pandemic project — to open this coffee shop — and he bought this building in Stamford and renovated it. He was going to rent it out to somebody else, then said, ‘Hey, why don’t I just open the coffee shop myself?’ and he did for a bit, but when things started opening back up and the pandemic was winding down, he got offers to be a professional musician again. He was stuck in Stamford with the shop, and he loves it here, but it was a passion project … and it was, ‘How do I move on from this and leave it in a good place?’
“I had come up here to help my buddy who owned the restaurant (Half Acre Catskills) across the street,” McCleery continued, noting that that building was one of several to perish in a December 2023 fire. “It’s no longer a place, but I came up here to open that restaurant, because I’ve been working in food service for over 10 years … and my last job had just ended. I thought it would be a great way to spend a summer, but I absolutely fell in love with the area and the people in it. Stamford has a really wonderful community. I was just automatically thinking, ‘I’ve got to stay in this area and do something up here.’ I had thoughts of doing my own business — not a coffee shop — but I knew I didn’t want to go back to Brooklyn, and I didn’t want to work for anybody else and it was kismet. I was at a dinner and Julian said he was selling. I looked at him and said, ‘Would you be interested in entertaining another buyer?’”
McCleery said, while she’s kept the coffee at the forefront, bringing in her background has broadened the fare.
“We have locally roasted coffee — our coffee guy is Roman Roasters out of Delhi, and he’s absolutely fabulous,” she said. “And I do lots of food. We have freshly baked pastries every morning, biscuits and cinnamon rolls, croissants and I’ve been very slowly building out the kitchen, because it didn’t have a kitchen when I took over. I’ve been running lots of cool sandwiches and I have plans to start bringing in farm-fresh produce from Roxbury in the spring and summertime. And one of my baristas is from here and grew up here, and he knows everybody and knows all their coffee orders.”
Beverage favorites, McCleery said, include her smoky maple latte and mint mocha latte, while culinary top sellers include her cinnamon rolls and a turkey-pesto sandwich that “people seem to be obsessed with.”
McCleery said demographics are diverse.
“We get everybody,” she said. “The area has a lot of transplants, like me, and there’s a decent artists’ community, a lot of locals and people who’ve been here their whole lives and weekenders or people who’ve moved up full time and made this their new home. But our bread and butter is the locals. And it’s a good spot to hang out, too. There’s a strong community vibe here, so people come here for meetings or to play board games or work on their laptops, so it’s a whole gamut. And feedback has been good. I think people appreciate having another food option in town.”
McCleery said she hopes to build on that momentum.
“I have so many plans,” she said. “My No. 1 goal right now is to finish the buildout of the kitchen so I can expand the food menu, and I would love to get a catering license and do some catering and some wholesaling of food.”
Stamford Coffee is open 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Monday and Wednesday; 8:30 to 5, Thursday and Friday; 9 to 5, Saturday and Sunday; and closed Tuesday.
For more information, follow @stamford_coffee on Instagram.