A buzzy chatter filled Baby’s Coffee Tuesday afternoon on Fleming Street, where curious customers were delighted to find the long-awaited downtown location open, inviting and serving the premium, high-mountain-grown coffee that has been satisfying Key West’s and the Lower Keys’ caffeine cravings for 35 years.
Wait, what? Baby’s Coffee? On Fleming Street? In Old Town? The same Baby’s Coffee from MM 15? The one with the cool “eye-opening” logo?
That’s the one.
Owners Joe Bracciale and Alessandra Torre bought the beloved Baypoint landmark in 2024 from Gary Teplitsky and Olga Manosalvas, who had been roasting, grinding, brewing and serving premium coffee since 1991, when they bought the original Baby’s Bodega at 1111 Duval St. They moved to MM 15 in 1995.
And to think, but for the flip of a coin, Baby’s Coffee would have been Baby’s Barbecue back in 1991.
“Olga and I were buying Baby’s at 1111 Duval St., from Baby Rodriguez in 1991,” Teplitsky recalled last week. “Olga looked at me and said, ‘Heads coffee, tails barbecue.’ She flipped the coin and here we are. That was the last time I ever took a dare from Olga.”
But that coin flip paid off and carved Baby’s Coffee into a place of permanence in the Lower Keys.
“Every time we leave Key West and head north, we have to stop at Baby’s Coffee, so we’re thrilled they’re now open in Old Town,” customer K.P Agard said on Sept. 1 while enjoying the new location and perusing the merchandise counter of bagged coffee beans (ground or whole), shirts and hats.
“Our focus is always on the locals,” Bracciale said. “Obviously we’re here for the tourists and we love them. Hell, we ship 35,000 bags of coffee to them every month, all over the continent. But the whole business down here is about taking care of the locals.”
To that end, Bracciale and Torre are launching the Baby’s Breakfast Club for locals. They’ve installed a Dutch door that opens onto Bahama Street for easy online ordering and priority pickup.
”If you’re a local with a local ID or a pay stub, then you can sign up, order online and pick up your coffee from the Dutch door. We know people come in on their way to work and if they look in and see a line of tourists who aren’t in a rush, they’ll go somewhere else. We don’t want that.”
The new location, right across Bahama Street from Fausto’s Food Palace, is inside a former antique store and has been entirely rebuilt, complete with a new water filtration system to ensure the perfect cup of coffee each time, Bracciale said.
“The water coming into this building goes through three filters and new copper wire,” he said, walking upstairs to what will become a dark wood- and leather-appointed coffee lounge with balcony seating overlooking Fleming Street and huge pieces of history, including a giant CUbam flag from the 1800s and the original doors from the very first Baby’s.
“When we bought Baby’s in Baypoint in 2024, we were customers and we lived at Baypoint. The goal was not to change Baby’s when we bought it. We didn’t want anyone else to come in and change a great thing. So our goal at mile marker 15 was just not to screw things up. Gary is one of the best-known coffee roasters in the country. I walk around national coffee conferences with this guy and it’s as if I’m with Elvis,” Bracciale said laughing.
“I’m like Joe’s little brother,” said Teplitsy, who still handles the artful alchemy of coffee roasting at both Baby’s locations. He learned the trade three decades ago on Duval Street from two Cuban roasters who came down from Miami to help him roast and develop what would become Baby’s signature Havana Roast and Cuban Roast. Teplitsky made countless cups of coffee perfecting the process.
“Finally, one day, the Cuban roasters tasted what I offered and said, ‘That’s it. Stop. Don’t change a thing,;” Teplitsky said. “From that day on, that was and still is our exact Cuban Roast and Havana Roast.”
Ironically, Bracciale pointed out, actual Cuban coffee — as in beans grown in Cuba — have not been available in the United States since 1963, when the United States imposed a trade embargo on Cuban goods. “Our coffee is 100% high-mountain, Jamaican coffee.”
And Manosalvas, who designed the business’s iconic wide-eyed logo more than 30 years ago, was busy painting a new mural on the wall at Fleming Street this week.
“This location is about bringing Baby’s back home to Old Town,” Bracciale said. “Many people don’t know that Baby Rodriguez originally started at 1111 Duval St.”
The original sign that hung over the old bodega now hangs in the window at 418 Fleming St., which is open daily from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — at least, Bracciale said.
“We’re consistent. We won’t shorten our hours. And we’re open 365 days a year,” he said. “In the coffee business, many of your customers come in five days a week. Those relationships are special and we never forget that.”
For more information and online ordering, visit babyscoffee.com and follow them on social media for updates about the upstairs coffee bar.
