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NJ Coffee School - Coffee Business Classes

NJ Coffee School Focuses on Café Financials

  • By Anthony Birritteri, Editor-in-Chief

Read NJ Business Magazine’s full interview with Jim and Bernie, Co-Founder and President at New Jersey Coffee School

How hard can opening a coffee shop be? For the budding entrepreneur who wants to venture into the business – whose idea of opening a local cafe has been “percolating” in their head for quite some time, the first move they should make – in order to discover the real challenges and opportunities in opening a shop – is enrolling in a course at the New Jersey Coffee School in Hoboken.

Founded in November 2022 by co-presidents Jim Conti and Bernie Rosenstein, the school concentrates on all the financial aspects of running a coffee business, in addition to teaching students about the different types of coffee beans and where they are grown, the roasting, grinding and brewing techniques, and the necessary equipment required to make that perfect “cup of joe.”
In listening to Conti and Rosenstein, one quickly learns that opening a café is more than about putting coffee grinds in a filter, pouring water in a machine, and hitting the “on” button. It’s more about startup costs, ongoing labor costs, pricing and margins, shop efficiencies, leases, location, demographics and traffic, branding and marketing costs, nearby competition, and more.
“Most people open a coffee shop because they simply think they can do it, without respecting the venture as a business. But when we conduct our class here, I am like the ‘Scared Straight guy,” Conti says, referring to the 1978 documentary where prison inmates terrified juvenile offenders to set them on the right path and avoid prison.
The school offers a variety of courses, but the main session for those wanting to know the complete ins and outs of running a coffee business is the three-day Professional Coffee Business Class. Day 1 is spent in the school’s onsite coffee shop classroom where students learn about the diverse types of coffee drinks and the ways to make them. Days 2 and 3 are all about the economics of running the business. “That is when you start to see the dream leaving the eyes of some of the students,” Conti says.
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