On a recent Saturday, Bianca Georgedakis ran 17 miles to work. She had inventory to do at our Dumbo café and a long run to fit in before her first New York City Marathon, so she did both. Partway through she sat down for a break, and she has since come around to the idea that the race itself could use one. “Maybe the marathon just needs an intermission,” she says.
She came to Joe burnt out from restaurants, following her friend Rachel, who she has now worked with at four jobs in a row. She didn’t drink coffee. The only coffee she knew was the kind her grandparents drank, which she calls old man coffee. At Bryant Park she found an iced coffee she actually liked, and now she keeps a list of drink ideas on her phone. One is inspired by Starburst.
She has worked at a long list of our cafés since then. “I literally make my rounds,” she says.
At Upper West Side there was John, a tall older man who shuffled in most mornings as the second customer of the day and ordered a large drip. When Bianca told him she was getting married, he was thrilled for her. When she told him she was also leaving for Pulitzer, he said, “That’s not great at all.”
Later Beata asked her to open Bergen in Park Slope. At one point she went back to working the bar at Dumbo, where nearly everyone in line is a tourist. She missed seeing a familiar face, and she figures the tourists, trying to read a menu in a city they don’t know, feel about the same. “So it’s a mutual fatigue,” she says.
Now she runs Dumbo and Bergen, and she’s trying to talk her team into dressing up as Moana for Halloween, with almost everyone else as coconuts.
Her marathon is in November. When we asked how we could support her, she said, “Just cheer for me.”
