Pilar Coffee Bar, Mokafé, Coffee Lobby among small and midsize coffee businesses planning Long Island shops

Small and midsized coffee chains entering new markets, including Long Island, are chipping away at Starbucks’ dominance in the coffee sphere.

Pilar Coffee Bar & Iced Treats, Caribou Coffee and Coffee Lobby are among the players planning to open their first Long Island shops, while coffee chains already on the Island, including Tim Hortons and Mokafé, have additional shops planned.

Consumers’ growing demand for more niche products and services — everything from a nightclub-lounge atmosphere to late-night closings to alcohol-infused coffee drinks — is helping to boost coffee sales. And small to midsize coffee businesses are driving much of the industry's sales growth, experts said.

"We saw a gap between fast coffee and high-end cafes that feel unapproachable. Coffee Lobby was built for people who love coffee but also crave space — to think, connect, or just breathe. It’s not fast coffee, and it’s not pretentious coffee," restaurateur Peter Kambitsis said via email about his coming Coffee Lobby shop.

The 1,800-square-foot shop will open around mid-May on the ground floor of the new the Langdon Lynbrook Station apartment complex across from the LIRR Station, he said.

Construction of the 201-apartment building was finished in June, said Kenneth Breslin, president of Garden City-based Breslin Realty Development Corp., which built the development in partnership with Fields Grade Development.

Coffee Lobby will feature an upscale look, with white marble walls from Greece, tile floors from Italy and furniture also from Europe, including white leather and cloth loungelike seating, Kambitsis said.

The shop will look like a European cafe, he said.

"If you go to Paris, this is what you see. If you go to Italy, this is what you see. If you go to Greece, this is what you see," he said.

Coffee Lobby, which also will sell sandwiches and desserts, will have a full-service kitchen baking bread and pastries from scratch, he said.

Kambitsis owns six other eateries in New York, including Peruvian restaurant Pappa Gallo and Sugarberry Bakery Cafe in Rockville Centre, and New York Bakery Café in Astoria, Queens.

He plans to purchase wholesale coffee for Coffee Lobby from the same place he buys coffee for his other restaurants and bakeries — from For Five Coffee Roasters, a Queens-based chain with 17 coffee shops, including three on Long Island.

Local, regional players gaining

Not only are Americans drinking more coffee, but they’re getting it from more places, experts said.

Some of the independently owned shops that have opened on Long Island in the past year include Nautilus Roasting Co in Huntington Station, Sea Cliff Daily Grind, Sweet Harbor Coffee in Roslyn and Record Cafe, which sells coffee, snacks and vinyl albums, in Patchogue.

Also, among the 14 shops operated by Indiana-based MOTW Coffee, which stands for Muslims of the World, is the chain's first location in New York State, which opened in Hicksville in November.

While Starbucks remains the Goliath in coffee, with the Seattle-based chain having double the sales volume of its closest competitor, Dunkin, consumers are increasingly visiting growing challenger chains, said Kevin Schimpf, senior director of industry research at Technomic, a Chicago-based restaurant market research firm.

Starbucks' market share among U.S. coffee chains fell from 52% in 2023 to 48% in 2025, according to Technomic.

"Overall consumer sales for coffee cafe chains increased by just over 4% in 2025, with regional drive-thru brands like Dutch Bros, Scooter’s, and 7 Brew driving much of the sales growth due to their strong location expansion," said Schimpf. More stores and rising food and drink prices accounted for the increased sales, he added.

Founded in November 2023, Mokafé is a Long Island City-based coffee chain with nine shops in New Jersey and New York.

After bringing the flavors of its Yemeni and Guatemalan coffee to its first Long Island shop in Melville in October, the chain is planning to open a shop by the Hicksville LIRR in a former Dunkin spot, at 24 Newbridge Rd., in about two months, Mokafé co-owner Youssef Mubarez said.

Mokafé’s shops are performing well, and part of the appeal is their late-night closings, regardless of whether they are in urban or suburban locations, Mubarez said, adding that the Melville coffee shop closes at 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends.

"I just really think it’s not about where it is. I just think that we serve different needs, where people are hanging out at night. Our busiest time is at night and the weekend. As long as people want to get out, we’re a place to be," he said.

Some are franchises

Pilar Coffee Bar has one shop in Deerfield, Florida, and is planning seven more in Florida, Colorado and Long Island, according to its website.

Like Coffee Lobby, a Pilar shop will be opening in a high-end, mixed-use building on Long Island — taking a 2,500-square-foot space on the ground floor of the new Bryant Plaza residential and commercial development at 333 Warner Ave. in Roslyn Heights, said Jason Sobel, a vice president of RIPCO Real Estate LLC in Woodbury who represents the developer and the landlord, JK Equities in Port Washington.

Pilar’s other two Long Island coffee shops are planned for the Elwood Shopping Center on Jericho Turnpike in East Northport and at a Huntington site whose address is not being disclosed yet, said Stefani Steinberg, a vice president in the Manhattan office of real estate firm CBRE who represents the coffee chain on Long Island.

Pilar’s three Long Island shops will be franchises and they are expected to open this spring, she said.

Other coffee sellers planning Long Island entrances include Caribou Coffee. A franchisee is seeking approval from the town of Babylon to demolish two vacant buildings at 1116 and 1118 Broadhollow Rd. in East Farmingdale and to construct an 1,800-square-foot Caribou shop on the site, which Newsday reported in December.

Minneapolis-based Caribou has more than 800 shops in 11 countries, but none in New York State.

Caribou and Pilar did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the largest coffee chains in the United States, Tim Hortons, has a shop planned for a former 1-800-Flowers store space in Selden Plaza, said Greg Batista, a vice president at RIPCO who represents the shopping center. The shop would be a franchise in a 2,400-square-foot building, located at 285 Middle Country Rd., that is freestanding in the shopping center.

Headquartered in Canada, Tim Hortons has several coffee shops on Long Island, most of which are inside Bolla Market convenience stores.

Tim Hortons has more than 6,000 systemwide restaurants in Canada, the United States and elsewhere.

Tim Hortons declined to comment specifically on the planned Selden shop, saying only the company was "very excited about" its "continued development on Long Island."

Starbucks attempting turnaround

The overall restaurant business has been challenging for a few years as customers pull back on discretionary spending amid economic concerns, said Ari Felhandler, equity analyst for the consumer sector at Morningstar Research Services LLC, a financial services firm in Chicago.

Starbucks had significant price increases after the pandemic, leading consumers to question the chain’s upside, he said.

Starbucks, which has 41,118 stores worldwide, is attempting to right its ship as more competitors enter the coffee fray.

"At the end of the day, there's room for multiple players in this field. ... And it’s always been competitive. It really just falls on Starbucks to make their value proposition competitive and stay on trend," Felhandler said.

Worldwide in its fiscal fourth quarter that ended Sept. 28, Starbucks’ 5% increase in revenue and 1% increase in sales at stores open one year marked the company’s first positive quarter in seven quarters, CEO Brian R. Niccol told analysts during an earnings call in October. The company also closed 627 stores in the quarter.

Starbucks is seeing some success with its turnaround plan, Back to Starbucks, which was announced in September 2024, to improve the in-store experience. Actions have included returning the condiment bar and writing on cups, improving pricing transparency, shortening customers’ wait times, and simplifying the menu by removing 25% of the items, the chain said.

Starbucks’ global sales at stores open at least one year increased 4% in its fiscal year 2026 first quarter, which ended Dec. 28.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.