Astoria's Kinship Coffee Owners Return To Old Stomping Grounds

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Kinship Coffee has opened its third location in Astoria — and this outpost is a particularly meaningful one to co-owners Ashley Wood-Rivera and Stanley Rivera.

The new coffee shop at 30-10 Broadway is in the same building where the Riveras lived when they first moved to New York City in 2009.

"When this spot became available, we jumped on it," Wood-Rivera told Patch. "We were like, oh, this is really our old stomping grounds."

The coffee shop, which opened April 18, has a robotic pour-over machine for brewing single-origin coffees. The process takes about the same time as brewing a latte, which makes it too slow for Kinship's busier location on Steinway Street, Wood-Rivera said.

Rivera trained as a barista in the 1990s to help his parents open a café in Iowa, where he and Wood-Rivera are from. He and a friend then developed the idea for a coffee shop that uses socially responsible roasters.

The name Kinship, Wood-Rivera said, refers to the connection they're forging between the different levels of the coffee supply chain.

The couple wants to open another Kinship location in the Ditmars area, where they live now, but they're in no rush.

"We can't stretch ourselves too thin," Wood-Rivera said.