If the lines out the door in Amagansett and at his 10th Street store in Greenwich Village are any indication, Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee, which counts Hilary Swank, Jerry Seinfeld and his wife Jessica —who are Sunday-morning regulars — and Alec Baldwin among its customers, is attracting quite a bit of interest.
Jack Mazzola is tight-lipped about who comes to his store, but they are all there in line waiting for his coffee. He started Jack’s Stir Brew Coffee in 2003 and now has six stores selling organic fair-trade coffee, vegan organic gluten-free baked goods produced in-house, and pressed juices.
Mazzola just launched a clothing line called Happy Jack, which offers $98 organic cotton branded sweatshirts and hats, and he recently starting selling his coffee and some baked goods wholesale.
The New Jersey-born Mazzola left school when he was 17 and hightailed it to New York. He started his first store with $65K he borrowed from his father, who runs an auto shop business, and is “a hard-nosed Sicilian guy.”
Now Mazzola has 50 employees. His biggest seller outside stir brew coffee are baked vegan donuts. He finds about 50 new items a year he sells at his stores, from Malibu honey to custom-made dog leashes.
He is also in talks on a “stir brew” coffee machine he designed and has patented that “stirs” the coffee during the process to give evenly distributed saturation of the blend.