There’s no shortage of coffee places in New York City. Gregorys Coffee aims to bring the highest-quality beverages to caffeine lovers throughout New York City and beyond.
Greg Zamfotis, founder and CEO of Gregorys Coffee, grew up in the food industry, with his father operating fast-casual food concepts throughout the city. When it came to opening Gregorys Coffee, Zamfotis knew he wanted to take the lessons he learned from his father to be the foundation of his business.
“[I wanted to be] able to create things of high quality, great customer service, great experiences for the guests, and doing it quickly. Growing up in New York, hustle and bustle, that was always the name of the game,” said Zamfotis. “You’ve got to make sure you can move through those lines and do it efficiently. What I saw was an opportunity to bring that to the coffee space.”
The first Gregorys Coffee location opened in 2006 at 24th Street and Park Avenue South. Like your traditional coffee shop, Gregorys Coffee offers a menu of classic hot and iced coffee house brews and specialty drinks that are beloved by their customers (affectionately called “Gregulars”).
Beyond the drink menu, Gregorys Coffee offers a food menu of sandwiches and pastries with classic and vegan options.
When it comes down to it, Zamfotis wants to challenge the status quo with coffee shops and not make them have to choose between great coffee and fast service.
“We want guests to feel like there’s no sacrifice because there tend to be a lot of sacrifices when people are making their coffee choice. Like I want a great coffee, but if I want a great coffee, it’s probably gonna cost a lot of money, take me a long time to get it, and the menu might be kind of limited, or I’m in a rush,” said Zamfotis. “So how can we deliver the most amount of value or impact for guests? We can do high quality at volume at speed with a great menu whether you’re looking for a classic drink or a classic pastry or something plant-based. We check a lot of boxes for a lot of folks.”
The latest Gregorys Coffee offering, the Ener-G drinks, takes a different approach to caffeinating the Gregulars. Created in-house, the Ener-G drinks are currently available in two flavors: Blue Steel, which combines blue spirulina, lime and mint, and Island Bowl, made up of passion fruit, guava and mango. Each drink contains 160 mg of caffeine and has no added sugars.
Zamfotis says that the move to include energy drinks on the menu came when there was a demand for energy consumption outside of the traditional coffee offerings at different points of the day.
“We can start delivering more for guests when they’re looking for that source of energy, whether it’s with coffee, matcha, or now energy drinks, so there’s certainly a demand for that energy component,” said Zamfotis. “People are not always looking for a cup of coffee prior to going to the gym, or during the day they want something a little more fruit-forward. We wanted to create something that we thought our guests were looking that kind of fit in our menu and would be a nice compliment to the rest of what we’re already serving.”
Zamfotis says that the response to the Ener-G drinks has been overwhelmingly positive, citing specifically when the drink was tested among run clubs in New York City.
“People loved it. There’s some other canned products out there that have become popular. When we let them know that we were going to be showing up with an alternative to that, people were very excited to try and give us a resounding two thumbs up,” said Zamfotis.
In 2024, Gregorys Coffee continued to expand across the country, with the brand opening its 54th location in New Jersey. Zamfotis hopes that the company can continue to grow their “Gregulars” and use their feedback to develop the menu further with local options.
“I think we’ve always sort of hung our hat on the fact that we create really innovative, forward-thinking menus. And now having had the opportunity to meet people across the country and learn what people are looking for, we’re trying to take the best of what we’ve seen and incorporate it into our menu plan so we can create a lot of really amazing products, the Gregorys way,” said Zamfotis.
For more information, visit gregoryscoffee.com.
