WYOMING – The Midway Shopping Center has been calling Frank and Patty DeViva’s names for years but the couple always resisted answering. Until now.
“The management of this property has been trying to get me to open a Bakehouse-style shop here for 10 years,” Frank said. “It was never the right time.”
Now, however, the timing is right and the former owners of Bakehouse in Kingston have opened Isle of Coffee at the Wyoming Avenue shopping center, in a space located between the Hong Kong restaurant and Ford’s Family Auctions.
“Isle of Coffee is fun,” said Frank, who is thrilled to be in an area with two banks, a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant, a supermarket, a Dollar Tree, a nail salon, an insurance agency and an eyeglass center. “This center has everything you could possibly need. The Midway serves a pretty broad area.”
Technology available now that didn’t exist when Bakehouse started makes Frank’s job that much easier. What would take him 9 to 10 hours to bake everything he needed for the day at Bakehouse can now be done in 1 ½ hours.
“An 80-year-old oven at Bakehouse was grossly inefficient,” Frank said, likening Isle of Coffee to a “ballet dance.”
“It’s easy. It’s fun. Everything is new so it’s easy to maintain and easy to clean,” he said. “As the crew matures and all our best practices are established, I should be able to work a legitimate 8-hour day,” he continued, indicating that would be substantially less hours than he worked at Bakehouse.
The Isle of Coffee project began in June when the DeVivas, who have known each other since she was 14 and he was 16, wanted to develop something more manageable than Bakehouse as Frank looks toward semi-retirement.
Bakehouse closed abruptly in December after Frank, who suffered a heart attack five years ago that required three stents, underwent a cardiac procedure to insert a fourth stent.
Former customers of that establishment will be glad to know all the old Bakehouse favorites can be found at Isle of Coffee, including bagels with specialty cream cheese, breakfast sandwiches, pastries, croissants, salads, sandwiches, wraps and three made-from-scratch soups every day.
“Here, we can target what customers want,” Frank said of the new coffee shop. “You don’t have to look deep into the national chains to see they are focusing on beverages, not food. Coffee products are on the rise.”
And Isle of Coffee has it all when it comes to beverages. You can get fresh brewed, iced, on-tap cold-brew, on tap nitro-brew, all espresso-based drinks, including espresso, cappuccino, latte, with optional flavors. Teas include traditional to herbal, iced tea on tap, iced or hot chai and special flavors, including matcha. Smoothies, shakes and frappes are available in many different flavor combinations.
While Frank does the baking and several key employees who used to work at Bakehouse run the new shop, Patty works behind the scenes handling marketing efforts for Isle of Coffee, which has a strong presence on Facebook.
“At Isle of Coffee, everything is possible and we listen to our customers,” Frank said. “They suggest something and we can make it happen. It’s easy for us to be on trend with coffee and baked goods now because, with new technology, we can shift gears on a dime.”
Isle of Coffee is open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and closed Sunday.
“That gives us a guaranteed day off,” Frank said. “I’m a church-going guy and Sunday is family time.”
