Lest you think we’re focusing all of our attention on the new shop, we’ve made some changes to ye olde Park Ave store and we think they’re pretty cool. We’re trying out replacing our Bunn batch brewers with shiny new Fetcos (left side of the picture, next to our new, blurrier barista) to step our house blend up to the next level. For teas and manual brewing, we’ve got these new Curtis Aerated Water Towers. Now, I know I get more excited about water towers than the average person (I get very excited) but temperature is super, super important, and having a tower that can consistently hold water at a programmed temperature ensures that we can make your Clever or French Press the same way every time, and all those recipes we spend hours perfecting are executed to their fullest. Upgrades like these are coming to all our shops soon. Get excited!

The day after we get a sneak peak at our new espresso machine, we arrived on the corner of 31st and 6th to find this on our doorstep (literally on our doorstep, mind you, our delivery man or woman decided it was a fine idea to leave this huge box in front of our as-yet-unmarked store and drive away). It’s a Probatino. It’s gorgeous. We love it already. Now, it’s a small batch roaster, so don’t go expecting us to start throwing around Gregorys-roasted bags anytime in the near future. But we are very excited about having this baby upstairs in the new shop to learn, explore, and play around with. More coffee fun for everyone! Yeah!

Sometimes your phone vibrates and someone has mentioned you on Twitter and you think, “well that’s nice.” Sometimes your phone vibrates and you look at the tweet and you’re suddenly a cartoon jumping ten feet in the air with exclamation points in your eyes instead of pupils. Witness:

Yes, those are the guts of our brand new Synesso, headed in the not-so-distant future from the Pacific Northwest to our new store in Herald Square; if I close my eyes I can smell the espresso.

So last month I got my monthly package from Brooklyn’s finest (Biggie R.I.P.) coffee subscription service Craft Coffee, and we opened it up at the shop and brewed up a cup of La Libertad, an Ecuadorian coffee from Miami’s Panther Coffee. We were impressed to say the least; impressed by its brightness and complicated sweetness; impressed enough to track down Joel from Panther and get our hands on a whole bunch of it to sell at the shop. Here’s a note full of details they sent us about it:

(I like reading about it, but tasting it is much better. See you at the shop!)

Hey, college grads! Congratulations! We’re super proud of you, and before your sense of accomplishment fades into worrying about the future, we want to give you a little coffee and pastry-based kick start to help ease the transition into the next phase of your life.

Long story short: bring in your 2012 college diploma (or, maybe more realistically, a picture of your diploma on your phone, or a copy of your diploma) and we’ll put $20 on your Gregular card.