Korean cancer researcher-turned-entrepreneur Grant Lee says his passion for healthy and tasty coffee drove his business growth from day one.
“My philosophy is that you make great coffee, and customers will follow,” Lee told The Epoch Times in his newly renovated shop on North Street in downtown Middletown.
Plucked from high Arabian mountains, fermented in Korea, and roasted in Middletown, New York, the coffee beans are prepared with a unique, science-based methodology designed to enhance the coffee’s taste and health benefits while simultaneously minimizing its side effects, according to Lee.
Just a few storefronts away from its old location, the new Dayes Coffee shop features more seating, a self-serve pastry section, and an inviting and relaxing interior that blends a bright Korean style with European and American design elements, Lee said.
The shop name, “Dayes,” is a portmanteau meaning to start one’s “day” with “yes,” he said.
“I want my customers to relax and stay a while, enjoying a conversation with their friends or reading a novel,” Lee said. “I want to make them healthy and happy customers.”
At the Sept. 13 reopening of the shop, Mayor Joseph DeStefano thanked Lee for his investments in the up-and-coming city 65 miles northwest of Manhattan.
“He has made a significant investment in our city, especially in our downtown,” DeStefano told a crowd. “He is a great businessman, and I encourage people to come [and visit his store].”
Lee said he opened his first specialty coffee shop in downtown Middletown in 2021 after being attracted to the city’s more affordable rental market compared to New York City and northern New Jersey, as well as its potential for future economic growth.
Around the time of his arrival, a slew of public investments—the extension of the popular county Heritage Trail into the city and the incoming $10 million state grant for downtown revitalization—unleashed a new wave of private investments in Middletown, a former railroad city plagued for years by post-industrial-age urban decay.
(L–R) City clerk Richard McCormack, Juan Avalos, Jim Zhang, state Assembly candidate Paula Kay, Mayor Joseph DeStefano, Grant Lee, City Councilmen Gerald Kleiner and Joseph Masi, city economic development director Maria Bruni, and Stefania Sande at the grand opening of Dayes Coffee in Middletown, N.Y., on Sept. 13, 2024. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times
Since January, the city has hosted ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a dozen businesses in downtown and surrounding commercial pockets, including House of Birria Tacos and Cantina, ArtVicki Creations, A Taste of Guyana, Mister Croissant, Juice Jemz, Nana’s Colombian bakery, and Indian Farmer Market.
“The city and mayor are very supportive of new businesses, big or small,” Lee said.
Juan Avalos, longtime owner of Taco Factory, next door to Lee’s new shop, told The Epoch Times that as the city improves its streetscapes, and entrepreneurs spruce up one storefront after another, it will gradually elevate the aesthetics of the entire downtown business district.
“It is kind of like if my neighbor does something nice to his house, then I kind of want to do something to my house, too—it influences people to make their places better,” he said.
Just a mile west of the coffee shop on West Main Street stands Dayes Coffee Roasters, where Lee’s beans are roasted after going through a novel fermentation process in South Korea.
During fermentation, the green beans are treated with as many as 50 kinds of enzymes to enhance the coffee’s smoothness and digestibility and to drive down the levels of caffeine, tannins, and several other chemical compounds that can cause negative side effects if consumed in excess.
Then, at the Middletown roasting facility, the process is controlled in such a way as to prevent the beans from being charred and producing carcinogenic compounds, Lee said.
Before becoming a coffee business entrepreneur, Lee worked as a cancer prevention researcher at Tokyo’s National Institute of Health Sciences, Yale School of Medicine, and Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy.
His research work involved prostate, colon, and lung cancer as well as leukemia.
