Fair Folks & A Goat Serves Up a New Style of Coffee Shop

When you walk into the Fair Folks & A Goat café, it feels stumbled into someone’s living room. Owner Anthony Mazzei, 31, sits in one of two neon colored chairs, flipping through magazines on his iPad while his wife and business partner Aurora Stokowski, 29, mixes a fresh pot of coffee behind the bar nearby. Some patrons are sprawled comfortably on couches reading while others are settled at tables plugged into computers.

Anthony wanders around the café taking bets on how much chocolate bread will be consumed by the collective this month. “We’re getting the bread from the bakery next door and plan on selling it at a discounted price to members,” he says.

The couple has an innovative business plan when it comes to selling coffee. Fair Folks & A Goat is a membership café, for $25 a month visitors can have unlimited coffee, espresso, and tea and invitations to art events that are held at the café. According to the couple, Fair Folks & A Goat is supposed to be a home away from home for commuters. Members also chose one of two charities when they sign up and a portion of their membership fee goes to the cause. Customers who don’t want to be members can also purchase coffee a la carte.

In addition to subscription-based coffee, everything inside the café is for sale. Various pieces of art, furniture, and sculptures are spread around the space.

Some are designer originals, like the long dining table in the center created by an artisan in Brooklyn. Fair Folks is the only retail location his work is sold. Others, like the neon green comfy chair that Anthony is seated on, are bought in bundles from design shows in the city.

The pieces for the store are chosen by Aurora, who used to be a buyer for the Design Store at the Museum of Modern Art.

“The competition at the MoMa was tough for new designers because of all the hierarchy and politics,” says Aurora.

For her, Fair Folks & A Goat is a chance to showcase lesser-known New York City designers.

The couple perfected the membership café concept when they ran a coffee house in New Orleans.

“Here I stand outside and try and get people in, In New Orleans, I was like a bouncer keeping the rowdy ones out,” shares Anthony, “They always seemed angry that they couldn’t get a drink at a coffee place.”

Anthony pauses to tell the professor grading papers on the couch to get comfy, “If you fall asleep we’ll wake you up,” he says.

The pair is used to patrons passing out, the coffee house New Orleans doubled as a bed and breakfast. “There it was like ‘if you fall asleep we’ll have to charge you’,” jokes Anthony.

Once they realized the membership method was profitable, the couples moved the operation up to New York City. 

The last New York City location for the café was in a third floor loft in a residential area. With little visibility and signage, the café quickly had trouble turning a profit. Determined not to let lack of advertising be an issue again, Anthony negotiated with the landlord to have ads for Fair Folks placed in the windows for a few months before the café opened at it’s new Greenwich Village address in the fall. The extra marketing paid off and by the end of the summer the couple had 60 members signed up.

Only ten days after opening, Fair Folks & A Goat has already racked up 160 members willing to pay $25 a month for an unlimited supply of caffeine and seems to show no signs of stopping. “I think we’ll cap it at 300 here and if this level of interest continues we’ll open another location,” says Anthony.