Our Story

Mongo’s Coffee Roastery & Lounge is a Local Micro- Roaster of incredibly fresh coffees. We are a small independent coffee roaster open to the public and the trade. Our large comfortable lounge offers a unique perspective of the roastery while enjoying the fruits of its production.

Our foods and baked goods are all made in-house fresh every day. Mongo’s coffees are all sourced through partners that share our commitment to quality, fair price and sustainable horticultural practices.

Our coffees are roasted to order in small batches. We blend and package our coffees by hand and take great pride in the product that we make. We have 8 blends and numerous single origins to choose from. Our coffees taste like coffee. What does this mean? This means “full-on” taste profiles with clean, pleasant, persistent aftertaste. You will quickly find that we are passionate about our coffees and serious about making sure our customers’ expectations are exceeded.

The centerpiece, the pièce de résistance of Mongo’s Coffee, is our brand new Probat UG-22 coffee roaster. Until recently, the only UG-22’s that were available were 50+ years old and in need of serious TLC. This is because this iconic model ceased production in 1958. UG’s have gained popularity in recent years because their heavy cast iron construction provides excellent thermal properties that equate to very consistent coffee roasting. But wait, we said ours is “brand new?!” Kirsch & Mausser, a small subsidiary of Probat, began making new UG-22’s a few years ago after they uncovered some old castings from the original beasts. They make 20 or so units per year and Mongo’s Coffee was lucky enough to have one commissioned for us. We can roast 200 lbs. of “crazy good” coffee an hour!

Who is Mongo?

Mitchel (Mongo) Margulis has been a fixture in the specialty coffee industry since 1990. His passion was ignited when he started working for Lavazza USA. He was intrigued by their scientific approach to coffee and thoroughly embraced espresso and all of its culture.

In 2004, Mitchel founded Real Coffee Roasters and in 2008 partnered with prominent restaurateurs to form Stone Street Coffee Company. In 2014, after a good run at Stone Street, Mitchel left the company he founded to regroup and form the company that he first envisioned! Mongo, as his camp friends call him, simply wanted to combine the feel, smells and visuals of a wholesale coffee roastery but with a large coffee lounge within it.

Mitchel’s exceptional knowledge of coffee and unique approach to blending & roasting has brought him many accolades. His coffees have been “the last impression” for some of the best and most prestigious meals served in New York City for years, but opening Mongo’s Coffee Roastery & Lounge is tantamount to fulfilling his most desired objective, this has been his vision all along.