The Work We Do: Making coffee with Jovani Sanchez
I’m Jovani Sanchez, and I’m an assistant manager at Hampton Coffee Company. I’ve been working for the company — which has locations in Aquebogue, Westhampton, Water Mill and Southampton — for almost five years now. I started working here when I was 15.
I do a whole lot of different things here. You make coffee for everyone and lattes; you make muffins. We do all of our baking in store.
When I open the door in the morning, usually there’s one other employee here. Our 4 a.m. person, actually, the baker. I usually get here around 6 in the morning, when we open up the garage doors. We usually get our first rush around then and it stays steady up until around 8 a.m., when everyone’s in school or at work. Then you’re just getting everything ready, grinding coffee, making sure there’s enough for everybody in the day.
Since I’ve been here for so long I’ve definitely worked with a lot of different people. I know a lot of customers on a more personal basis. Instead of just being a customer and an employee it’s more of a hands-on experience in a sense. During the winter that’s really how we stay busy, we have a lot of great regulars that come in all the time. You see them in the morning when they go to work, and they stop by when they’re leaving work. They have their regular routine, stop in from 4:30 to 5 to get their chocolate biscotti or Americano. It’s really kind of cool, seeing all these people every day. You just have a connection you wouldn’t have if it was bigger, so keeping it small and local is pretty cool.
One of the best parts of working here is our co-workers. Everyone’s great; it’s like a small, little family. Everyone jokes around and has a good personal connection.
I just like making people’s drinks and coffee, and if that does anything for anyone that’s good.
‘The Work We Do’ is a News-Review multimedia project profiling workers around Riverhead Town with photos, video and text by Sascha Rosin. Read it first and see more photos every Monday on Instagram @riverheadnewsreview and view a video on facebook.com/theriverheadnewsreview.
