Something Hot At NuVita

When JiMin (Jason) Moon opened the doors to his NuVita Frozen Yogurt & Cafe at 35 Old Tavern Road in July 2011 during one of the worst economic downturns the country has seen in years, some skeptics wondered if the place would stay open for more than a month.

Located within a block of the ever popular Dip Top Ice Cream parlor, and offering only serve yourself yogurt, what were the odds of success?

The Amity grad and former high school football star had a lot going for him, he had friends — lots of them and a very good product. But he had more going for him, he is smart.

Jason did his research and developed a website and Facebook page for free, widespread marketing and in a short period of time had more than 700 followers.
Knowing that Wifi has great appeal for many business people, students (and reporters), he made it available before he ever opened the doors to the public. His father, relatives and others helped him decorate the cafe and they installed a tremendous amount of electrical outlets around the baseboard for cell phone chargers and laptops, etc.

One of his employees, John Jorge, hooked the place up with a stereo surround system, so there always is music playing when customers come inside.
That said, how can a frozen yogurt place survive in the winter when most ice cream shops are closed for the season?

It's all in the planning: there's a reason that the sign outside has "Cafe" on it.

All along, Jason knew he would someday introduce drinks to the business. First it was a cooler with bottled water, soda, power drinks, etc. and then, last month his vision became a reality and the brewing machines and specialty coffee and tea arrived.

He set up a coffee, espresso bar at NuVita. You won't find a commercial drip machine in this place. According to his customers, Jason's espresso is special, not bitter, and even those who usually take their restaurant coffee with milk and sugar, are drinking his very strong coffee straight up and loving it.

"We have coffee beans that are known to be in the top 10% in the world quality wise," Jason said.

The coffee beans come from different regions, of Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Panama, Columbia, Kenya and Nuvita's House Blend, which is a mix of three different regions.

"We don't brew coffee by machine, we hand drip it," Jason said. "When someone orders coffee, I grind the beans, put them in the hand-drip set on the counter, and pour hot water over them by hand so the coffee has the proper brewing phases, which brings the fullest flavor out of coffee."

From each batch of ground beans, he only makes one cup of coffee.

Jason is so serious about offering the best quality product to his customers that he took a course from the Italian masters on how to make expresso the right way, like they do in Italy. Every shot of NuVita espresso uses the same amount of beans as two shots anywhere else.

His espresso is, as described above, not bitter, it is the proper color and strength and his cappuccino has the perfect foam with a beautiful design on top that he makes in the process.

"For our latte, cappuccino and machiatos we offer not to add sugar because the steamed milk adds a genuine sweetness to it," he said.

"Our signature beverages are our milk teas that have various spices to pull out all the flavors of the tea," Jason said. "We add milk to it to give it a richer taste."
While he explained the process to Patch, a customer approached and said, "That was delicious, I've never had anything like it before."

Next up for Nuvita will be hot chocolate with homemade chocolate syrup that will surely warm customers up on a cold winter's night.

Don't forget, NuVita still serves frozen yogurt in a variety of flavors that Jason carefully monitors. He brings old favorites back on request and introduces new flavors each month, such as Pumpkin that became an instant fan favorite in November.

Visit the NuVita Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/NuVitaOrange and check for the secret code of the day where you can learn the secret word to use to get a discount for your purchase.

Every Thursday there is live music beginning at 7 p.m., sometimes maybe even featuring John Jorge.

NuVita is open Sunday 11 a.m. - 9:30 p.m.; Monday-Saturday 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.