To the Editor:

I understand why my neighbors in the Witherspoon-Jackson community are concerned about Sakrid Coffee’s proposed roasting operations at 300 Witherspoon Street, which will be discussed at the town Zoning Board meeting on Wednesday, June 28. Folks fear that local coffee roasting will negatively impact their families’ health and daily lives.

My neighbors have expressed worries that roasting will make Witherspoon-Jackson into an industrial park. If you believe that a coffee shop roasting small batches of beans for a few hours a week will produce a Dickensian miasma over the neighborhood, consider how unbearable it would be inside the shop. No one would linger over their latte in a shop housing a roasting operation that is the epicenter of foul-smelling air and choking dust. Sakrid would quickly go out of business.

Sakrid’s business depends on creating great experiences. Most of a coffee shop’s profit margins come from brewed drinks sold to customers, not roasting beans. If Sakrid wanted to build an industrial-scale roasting empire, there are far cheaper rents outside of Princeton. They are seeking the variance to roast at 300 Witherspoon because it allows them to consolidate their operations and emit less carbon in transport. Coffee roasting is not the core of Sakrid’s business and if it had major environmental impact on the neighborhood, it would be to their own detriment.

Sakrid’s new roastery will certainly be a change for the neighborhood — more people visiting, lingering, talking. Not all change is bad.

Ben Reinhardt
Birch Avenue