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Sweetleaf Coffee Roasters

Specialty coffee roaster · 4+ locations · Long Island City, Greenpoint

A specialty roaster with four cafés in Long Island City and Greenpoint, one of which doubles as a cocktail bar. Rich Nieto opened it in 2008 expecting the neighborhood to change, and no outside investment is on record.

Founder-run

The Big Picture

Genuinely Independent

Since 2008 Sweetleaf has grown to four cafés and a Greenpoint roastery with no outside investor on record. Its single-origin bags name the farmer, region and altitude behind each coffee, though it names no importer and claims no outside certification. It has little public labor or environmental record either way, and it answers to its founder, Rich Nieto.

The Dirty Details

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Company data last updated September 2026

How does one person build and research all this? They don't: here's how it actually works. Verdicts are our opinions, based on the public sources cited above as of September 2026. Spotted something off? or learn more.