Nero Kitchen is now open at 13 South Main Street in West Hartford Center.

By Ronni Newton

Before they finalized their design, Nero Kitchen’s owners spent time learning about the neighborhood, creating a traditional Italian-style cafe unique to West Hartford where people would not only want to come grab a quick latte or pastry but would also want to gather, to linger with friends or family over breakfast or lunch, sip a cappuccino while nibbling on a croissant, or hold a business coffee meeting.

“All of our cafes we do differently. We don’t have anything cookie cutter,” said Michael Ford-Deegan, who is one of the owners, with his brother Gerry Ford, of the family-owned and operated international Caffè Nero organization that launched in Europe in 1997. Ford-Deegan and Area Manager Scott Sergiano were at the West Hartford location on Sept. 26 for the soft opening.

Ford-Deegan said as they finalized the plans for the new cafe they spoke extensively with Maurice and Charlie Kaoud, who own the building at 13 South Main Street where they are located, and got a feel for West Hartford. The space they created is warm and friendly, eclectic and comfortable yet classy, with antique mirrors and historical photographs of West Hartford hanging on the walls. The furniture is made in New England, and the reclaimed wood used on the floors – which are accented by Turkish tile – and table tops was refinished locally as well, Ford-Deegan said.

There’s a wall of bookshelves surrounding a gas fireplace. The books are all from The Next Chapter – the used bookstore operated by West Hartford Public Schools post-secondary students which is next door.

“Our concept is not transactional. We want people to gather,” said Ford-Deegan. The spaces are kid-friendly, but they choose to open in locations where there are a large number of young professionals and/or in diverse communities where people can appreciate the international style of the cafe.

The West Hartford location is also a “Nero Kitchen” rather than a “Caffè Nero,” he said. The difference is that Nero Kitchen has a full-scale kitchen, where menu items can be made to order, on the spot. Most of their stores are the traditional Caffè Nero concept, where all of the baking and other food preparation is done on site, but generally first thing in the morning, and there are no custom orders.

“We thought West Hartford would appreciate this more than the traditional,” Ford-Deegan said.

The food is locally sourced and inspired to the extent possible, with the menu including traditional Italian and other European style pastries as well as brownies and cookies, and seasonal items like hot apple cider donuts – served on a stick for a special twist. The pastries are baked all day long, and are always fresh.

Breakfast and brunch foods are available all day, and the menu includes signature breakfast sandwiches as well as a build-your-own option, with numerous vegan offerings and gluten-free bread also available. There are yogurt parfaits, overnight oats, frittatas, fruit cups, and avocado toast, as well as various Eggs Benedict dishes and scrambled eggs with fingerling potatoes.

The menu also includes sandwiches – like roasted turkey and avocado on sourdough, grilled cheese sourdough, or an Italian ciabatta – as well as wraps, salads, bowls, and soups. Sandwiches and wraps are in the $11-$14 range.

The coffee is the cornerstone of the business, and they feature both the “Classico” – a signature blend artfully-created by a small group of expert “coffee masters” from as nine different types of directly-sourced beans, many of which come from small “coffee communities” in Central America as well as South America and Ethiopia. The single origin coffees vary with the season, and a Honduran coffee is currently on the menu. Caffè Nero has their own roastery, and their own packaging plant, and the baristas everywhere use the same Italian brand coffee machine and are trained the same way to create a great cappuccino or cortado.

For non-coffee drinkers, there are a variety of teas, lemonade, smoothies, and milkshake lovers will want to sample the frappe crèmes and frappe lattes.

Caffè Nero has 40 locations in the U.S. (some are Nero Kitchens), but this is just the second to open in Connecticut after opening in Darien earlier this year. The company expanded into the U.S. about 15 years ago, but other than a location in Providence (with another opening soon at Brown University) and one in Brooklyn, the rest are in Massachusetts and range from a kiosk in a train station in South Boston to spaces twice the size of the West Hartford location.

The U.S. operations are in the Seaport area of Boston, and that’s where Ford-Deegan is based, but the company – founded by his brother, Gerry (who uses “Ford” as his last name while Michael Ford-Deegan has added his mother’s family name, Deegan, to his surname) is headquartered in London.

Ford-Deegan and his brother are originally from California, which leads many to wonder how it is that an American founded an Italian-style coffee-oriented cafe in the U.K.

Their family lived in Europe for several years when they were kids due to their father’s job, Ford-Deegan said. They lived near the border of Germany and France, but traveled with their parents and grew to love the European “cafe culture.” When his brother went to Oxford to get his Ph.D, Ford-Deegan said, “coffee was not a thing,” but he missed it.

Gerry Ford founded Caffè Nero with the goal of creating the cafe culture in places where it did not already exist. “This was his baby,” said Deegan-Ford, who had left a role working for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, DC to get an MBA and was working in the venture capital field. He was on the board and an investor in his brother’s company, and took on a larger role as the business expanded from England, to Turkey, the Middle East, Cyprus, Poland, Ireland, and Sweden, as well as to the U.S. Ford-Deegan is currently considering locations for expansion into Saudi Arabia and Greece.

Although they have more than 1,000 locations worldwide, the growth is measured and purposeful. “We only do what we can control,” Ford-Deegan said. “We don’t ever want to be thought of as a chain.”

The branding as an Italian-style cafe featuring coffee may be the same everywhere, but “every store we open up we design it ourselves, and decide how it fits into that community,” Ford-Deegan said.

Caffè Nero has about 10,000 employees worldwide, with about 500 in the U.S. and 15 in the new West Hartford location, all of whom are local. “We really value people who can be with us for years. We really try to make it feel with our people that we’re a family,” Ford-Deegan said.

Ken Ewig is the manager of the West Hartford location. “We’re so excited to be here,” he said. “I can’t wait to get involved with the community and provide great coffee to everyone.”

Nero Kitchen is open Monday through Saturday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

Caffè Nero also has an app, which can be used to order ahead as well as to earn loyalty points for free coffee. An initial download of the app with the code “TREATUS24” will earn you a free coffee and pastry, and if you’ve downloaded the app and bring a book to donate to the The Next Chapter bookshelf you’ll also get a free coffee.

Many longtime residents may remember the space where Nero Kitchen is now located, at 13 South Main Street, as Friendly’s – and in between the closing of Friendly’s in October 2011 and the opening of Sweet Frog in January 2013 – in December 2011 – the space became the imaginary “Be Brite Diner” as part of the movie set for “Pawn,” an indie movie which starred Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Michael Chiklis, and Nikki Reed. Sweet Frog closed in August 2022, and the space had been vacant until Nero Kitchen began the build-out early this year.

 

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