GREENFIELD — For Catalpa Coffee on the corner of Main Street and Bank Row, the business shutdown caused by the pandemic offered a surprise opportunity to rethink, says owner Annie Lytle-Rich.
“When you reopen a business after it’s closed, you’re making a commitment,” she explained. “What do I want this to be? What do I want it to look like?”
Perhaps the most obvious change visible to passersby is the exterior sign, which just changed within the past two months. But the company itself is not that new, having been formed in 2019 when Lytle-Rich (whose parents Curtis Rich and Kathy Lytle own Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters) purchased Greenfield Coffee, Northampton Coffee and Tart Baking Co. The name “Catalpa” is inspired by the family story that Rich proposed to Lytle underneath a catalpa tree.
Catalpa Coffee has a core menu of mainstay coffees — an espresso, a dark French roast and a Costa Rican coffee — but also seasonally rotates other coffees and different drinks, Lytle-Rich said. Those may include teas with different herbs or citrus ingredients, or specialty espresso drinks, for example.
The three coffees at the center of the menu were among the parts of the business that were incubated in the shutdown of the pandemic, Lytle-Rich said, adding that the recent rebranding reflects over a year of work.
“During the shutdown I spent hours and hours and hours and days and days and days just trying painstakingly to find the best espresso I’ve ever had,” she said. “It was a creative opportunity to dive in.”
What she arrived at was the Dawn Espresso, which combines coffees from different regions of Africa with very different strains of coffee from Colombia. The way it works, Lytle-Rich said, is that the flavors of the African coffees tend to be acidic, somewhat like fruit; while the Colombian coffee is comparatively rich and chocolaty.
“It balances the top fruit notes,” Lytle-Rich said. “One of the things you look for in an espresso is you want something that stands well on its own, but you also want something that pairs well with milk. That’s why you want the balance of that chocolaty full-bodiness. It doesn’t get overwhelmed by the milk, and it doesn’t fight with the milk for flavor. It’s a really beautiful, smooth, but flavorful espresso.”
Other coffees on the menu will likely rotate every few months. For those, Lytle-Rich said, the menu will tend to focus on themes, like a certain region.
For the past few months, for example, the menu has had several Guatemalan coffees, showing the diversity of the region’s coffee.
“It has been really fun to play with,” Lytle-Rich said. “It’s not a big region for coffee, but the different coffees we’ve gotten have tasted incredibly different.”
Catalpa Coffee is at 1 Bank Row, in the space that used to be Greenfield Coffee. It is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The business can be found online at catalpacoffee.com and via Instagram @catalpacoffee. An app for iPhone and Android allows customers to order ahead.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com
or 413-930-4231.