Why Blank Street Raised $25 Million to Disrupt Coffee Chains
By automating drink preparation and operating tiny shops, the NYC coffee upstart could be the biggest threat to Starbucks yet
There are 4,000 coffee shops in New York City. Blank Street thinks they’re all doing it wrong. The company just raised $25 million from Tiger Global and General Catalyst to blanket the city with mobile carts and micro-stores serving low priced, high quality coffee.
What is Blank Street?
Finding a cup of coffee in New York City isn’t difficult. There are about 4,000 coffee shops in the city. Reinventing the way New Yorkers get their caffeine involves a combination of audacity, hubris, and insanity. That’s exactly what Blank Street is trying to do.
Believing that coffee shops were slow and overpriced, and inspired by the success of street vendors in Asia and mobile-first retailers like Heytea in China and Kopi Kenangan in Indonesia, founders Vinay Menda and Issam Freiha set out to create a new type of coffee shop. The result was Blank Street. The company operates small-format stores — mobile carts and tiny shops — trading-off square footage for price and convenience. Brick-and-mortar locations are roughly 700 square feet, about the size of a studio…
