The BOP Coffee Roastery has opened its doors in Windsor offering flavorful coffee, teas, and sandwiches inside a community centered cafe.
The coffee shop, located at 150 Broad St., officially welcomed customers to its new café inside Founder’s Square with a soft opening on Jan. 8. Since then, word has spread and attracted a growing number of customers seeking out unique coffee flavors.
“This is a huge moment for us, and we are very excited. This space at Founders Square is our flagship café. A place to meet a friend or two for a light breakfast, lunch, or happy hour. A comfortable and intimate third place that serves all the coffees we roast and teas we source, as well as craft cocktails, local ciders and beautiful wines,” said Jack Sullivan, owner of BOP Coffee Roastery.
BOP Coffee Roasters in Windsor (Stephen Underwood / Hartford Courant)
Sullivan, a self-proclaimed coffee lover, has been dreaming of opening a large coffee shop since 2019. Before the pandemic, he bought a former law office on New Park Avenue in Hartford and lived upstairs in the two-story property with his wife. Downstairs, Sullivan operated a coffee roaster business throughout the pandemic, sourcing beans for countries all over the world. An Indiana native, who came to Hartford eight years ago as a teacher at Achievement First High School, said he fell in love with the city.
Sullivan first gained a following in Hartford after opening his BOP Coffee Roastery on Pratt Street in early 2024. The Pratt Street location, which operated under the same roof as a tattoo shop, was a full service cafe with 12 indoor seats and additional outdoor seating. Sullivan took advantage of the city’s popular Hart Lift grant, which provides funds to new businesses to occupy vacant or abandoned storefronts in the Hartford. The Pratt street location closed last year, Sullivan said.
“The Pratt Street location was like a coffee bar, a lot of people came and got their coffee to go,” Sullivan said. “When we were leasing our space from the tattoo parlor, we just didn’t have as many seats. It was by design of the space that we weren’t going to get a lot of people sitting down to enjoy their coffee so we really wanted a place with more seating options. I always envisioned a place where the community could gather.”
BOP Coffee Roastery’s new Windsor location has seating for 35 people with additional outdoor tables coming. The coffee shop has several different unique coffee roasts and flavors including Kappi, which is a South Indian style filter coffee, a Vietnamese style coffee with condensed milk, and a very strong brew called “Not-Quite-Drugs.” The coffee beans are sourced from Those Guys Coffee out of New Hartford.
“It’s still our brand and coffee bags and I still buy the raw coffee, but I made the decision to partner with another local roaster to take the beans I source and do the production work,” Sullivan said. “My situation has changed a lot since a few years ago. I just had a baby and decided to focus more on the day-to-day operations of the coffee shop rather than the roasting business.”
BOP coffee beans for sale inside the BOP Coffee Roastery at Founders Square in Windsor. The coffee shop opened on Jan.8, and brews unique coffee flavors and roasts. (Stephen Underwood / Hartford Courant)
Coffee beans used at the BOP Coffee Roastery are sourced from Brazil and Haiti with the same importers Sullivan used when he was roasting out of his downstairs business on New Park Avenue, he said. Tariffs, he said, have put more pressure on independent roasters as prices to import beans have increased.
“The most important thing about sourcing and importing coffee is consistency,” Sullivan said. “Before some cafe in America is going to buy the next crop of an importer halfway around the world, they want to make sure the product and price stay mostly the same. We see a lot of people come in with their coffee preferences. Some people like a darker more flavorful roast, and others are looking for more speciality brews. We are happy to cater to both.”
The coffee shop also features a new selection of sandwiches, salads, toast and bowls along with tea options like matcha, masala chai, hot cocoa and rotating loose leaf tea selections. Sandwich options include a vegan chorizo with Calabrian cashew cream, a classic BLT option, and a “Master Jam” sandwich with tomato jam, egg, fried onions and whipped feta.
The menu for BOP Coffee Roastery was curated with help from sous chef Ryan Carrigan who works at Fork & Fire in Hartford. Sullivan said he first met Carrigan as a line cook at Max’s Trumbull Kitchen. The pair said they designed a menu that caters to a variety of different dietary restrictions.
“There is a lot of specials we work on. For example, we just took the ends of our leftover brioche we made for our sandwiches and made a delicious bread pudding out of it,” Sullivan said. “I live behind a place in Hartford called Fire & Spice, which has amazing porridge. That inspired me to add porridge to the menu. We do a four grain porridge blended with flax, oat, millet and quinoa that is lightly sweetened. We rotate out different toppings including cinnamon banana.”
While the walls of BOP Coffee Roastery are mostly blank now, Sullivan said he is going to hang two signs inside the coffee shop. One sign will say “Hartford” and the other will say “Windsor.” The signs are a nod to the two communities he calls home. BOP stands for “Blood of Paradise,” a line in a famous poem called “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens. The coffee shop features an indoor mural that displays prominent imagery from the poem. The moon in the mural depicts the face of his daughter, Sullivan said.
“I was sad to leave Hartford, but I still get customers from Hartford here, I’m just up the road,” Sullivan said. “You meet a lot of people here who say they grew up in Hartford or attended school in the North End. There’s a lot of Hartford connections intertwined here. The idea of the Wallace Stevens poem is that life is all about possibilities. It’s about making the best of the world the way it already is. Many ideas start with just a cup of coffee.”
Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com.
