Harbor Coffee, which began as a pop-up in 2021, is now open as a brick-and-mortar business in Inman Park.
The shop is located at 331 Elizabeth St., in a 1920s industrial building that was first home to a flour warehouse and later became part of the headquarters for Atlanta frozen pop business King of Pops.
Husband and wife John Noojin and Caitlin Hemmer thought about opening a coffee shop after they were both done with their respective Navy pilot of musican theater careers.
But when the pair, who met when they were living in Norfolk, Virginia, moved to Atlanta in 2019 and shortly after got a good deal on some coffee equipment, they decided to take the plunge.
“The pandemic rewrote the rules,” said Hemmer, who has worked side jobs in coffee for more than a decade. “It made us reassess and said, ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s do it.’”
Credit: Courtesy of Harbor Coffee
Credit: Courtesy of Harbor Coffee
Harbor started out as a pop-up on Elizabeth Street in 2021, out of a to-go window at the commissary kitchen of Atlanta baker Sarah Dodge’s Bread Is Good (which later turned into brick-and-mortar Colette Bread & Bakeshop on Highland Avenue), as well as Full Commission in Grant Park.
The menu at Harbor is similar to the offerings found at the pop-up, with a focus on classic espresso drinks and drip coffee, in addition to teas, chai and a blueberry matcha beverage.
Unlike most coffee shops, Harbor will typically only offer one specialty drink at a time, which will rotate about every two weeks. Recent specialty drinks have included a gingerbread coffee drink with ginger steeped in molasses and sugar, as well as a rosemary citrus drink made with a simple syrup infusion made with rosemary and orange peel.
Coffee beans for espresso drinks are sourced from Heart Coffee Roasters out of Portland, Oregon, while locally-based Portrait Coffee provides beans for drip coffee.
Harbor’s food offerings are a nod to its roots, with bagels and pastries from Dodge’s Colette Bread & Bakeshop including prosciutto buns, apple turnovers, chocolate chip cookies and potato galettes.
Credit: Courtesy of Harbor Coffee
Credit: Courtesy of Harbor Coffee
The 2,000-square-foot space, which has seating for about 30 customers, features exposed support beams made of old wood. “We left as much of it as untouched as we could, and it’s really open,” Noonjin said. A large terrazzo bar offers a few seats that allows employees to interact with customers, with the rest of the seating coming by way of tables and chairs in two different “living room-style” areas, he said.
“We’ve had people say that it has a cozy, cabin-like feel,” Hemmer said. “A lot of our inspiration came from old boat styles, but with the name being Harbor, we didn’t want to lean too much into the nautical theme. We just wanted to give you a bear hug as you come in.”
The space will be eventually host open mics and other communal events.
Hemmer and Noojin’s aspirations for Harbor are tied in with the reason they chose the word as the name for their business. “We see Harbor as a verb,” Noojin said. “No matter what you’ve got going on in your life or in your other spaces, this should be a place that you should be able to come and have a moment away from it.”
Harbor’s opening hours are 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesdays-Mondays, with plans for extended hours in the coming weeks.
331 Elizabeth St. NE, Atlanta. 404-678-1561, harborcoffeeatl.com.
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