Stedman Corners Coffee Roasters

Walk in to Stedman Corners and the smell hits before the sign does. Dan and his crew roast their own beans on Fairmount Avenue, a few miles from Chautauqua Lake, and the same counter that pours your dirty chai will sell you a bag of Butter Rum ground coffee to take home. It is a small room. Indoor and outdoor seats, a pastry case with oatmeal raisin cookies and breakfast sandwiches, a steady trickle of regulars who know what they want before the door closes behind them. The point of comparison locals keep reaching for is Starbucks, and the point is always that this is not that. Drivers passing through Lakewood stop in for a mocha and a sandwich. Bean buyers from the surrounding counties come for the Jamaican Me Crazy and leave with two bags. Dan tends to be the one ringing them up, and the hospitality is the kind that comes from the owner working his own counter rather than training someone else to perform it. The dirty chai is the order most repeated. The breakfast sandwich is the order to make when you want to sit down. The whole bag of Butter Rum is the order to make when you want to keep the room with you for the next two weeks at home. There is no laptop scene to speak of. No mention of wifi in any of the customer reports, which tells you what kind of place it is. The shop runs on hospitality and roast schedule, not on people camping at outlets. The repeat customers are the operation. If you want a quick sit-down coffee with a pastry and a few words from the owner, this is the shop in Lakewood. If you want anonymity and a back-corner table to grind out emails, you will not find it here. The smell of roasting beans, an oatmeal raisin cookie in hand, the dirty chai already on the way, that is the whole pitch. The whole bag of Jamaican Me Crazy is the souvenir.