Celebrating the Best Coffee in Rochester, NY!

The best coffee shop in New York state is located in Rochester, NY!

Aporia Coffee Co grows into one of the best coffee roasters in the city!

We love coffee. We love the taste, the aroma, the coziness of it, the way that it brings people together, and how it fuels our day. And we are stoked to be part of a community where tastingtable.com believes the best coffee in New York state is in Rochester, NY, and is located right around the corner. Congratulations Ugly Duck Coffee! 

So what makes a coffee shop or coffee roaster the best coffee? We (as in Jason and Angelina) don’t know, but we have an amazing in house coffee roaster that we’ve been working with since 2018 who does. Before we opened POP ROC Cereal Bar and Comic Shop, we spent time visiting different coffee roasters in Rochester, NY and surrounding areas. We landed on partnering up with local roasters like Canaltown Coffee Roasters and Fifth Frame. At this time, we had a newborn and toddler, so we wanted to offer those who needed the strongest cup of coffee in the world, the strongest cup of coffee in the world. So we added Death Wish Coffee to our menu and became one of the only coffee shops in Rochester NY who offered Death Wish in a cup. Fast forward about a year. We phased out of Fifth Frame and added a new coffee roaster to our team, and their coffee to our rotation, Aporia Coffee Co. The owner of Aporia branched out from their position at Fifth Frame in an effort to provide an elevated coffee experience through education, from bean to cup. Our team at POP ROC knew Aporia was going to be a change agent and we wanted to be a part of their mission.

Aporia Coffee Co is a wholesale coffee roaster and coffee educator based in Rochester, NY and they are exploding! You can find their coffee in shops like RoCoCo Coffee Co, Locals Only, Goode Times Cafe, Happy Gut Sanctuary, POP ROC Cereal Bar and Comic Shop, and of course, Ugly Duck Coffee. What we love about partnering with Aporia is the knowledge they carry, the mission they are on, and the quality of coffee they serve. We may not know what qualifies a cup of coffee as the best coffee, but we do know without a doubt, that a great cup of coffee is often coupled with great conversation. Coffee brings people together both at the coffee house, and in the country in which it was sourced. 

Aporia shares, “It’s people who make processing, shipping, roasting, and preparing coffee what it is. We step into this flow of human activity with a heart and mind to share these stories and understand how we, as coffee roasters and educators, might make it all more equitable by connecting the many people who love what we love.”

We are looking forward to 2022. Instead of us purchasing coffee wholesale to serve at our coffee shop, we are bringing the roaster in to set up shop. POP ROC and Aporia are coming together with another local business, Rebel Roots, to launch an entrepreneurship collaboration. Rebel Roots is currently a pop up plant shop who is expanding into the coffee business and will be serving out of the shop as well. This collective was born out of a need to serve the community in a different way. Together, this team makes SPACE Force, and all serve as trusted service providers at SPACE Rochester. SPACE Rochester is a platform that connects short-term commercial spaces to entrepreneurs looking to test out their business idea prior to making a long-term commitment.

2022 will be a year of doing business differently. When we talk about “better together”, we’re talking about community, collaboration, and co-creation. Many businesses talk about it, but unfortunately, we don’t see a lot of action. Our goal is to help accelerate this concept in the Rochester NY area in an effort to build back better, to do better, to be better. Coffee is an excellent tool to bring people together. It’s also an excellent way to bring people into the shop to see this concept in action and start the conversation of how we can make a positive difference in our community.

If you’re interested in purchasing or selling coffee from Aporia, you can visit their website at www.aporiacoffee.com, any of the other local businesses shared, or visit POP ROC Cereal Bar and Comic Shop on Wednesdays currently from 10am to 2pm.

We look forward to serving you soon!