Montclair has enough coffee shops that picking one out of habit means missing out on what the others do better. This guide sorts the best coffee shops in Montclair, N.J., by what you actually need that morning: a reliable daily order, a table to work at, something you can’t get anywhere else in town, or a cup you can grab without slowing down.
fabulous, Everyday Coffee
These shops built their reputation on the basics: fresh beans, roasted well, poured consistently. Any one of them can become a daily habit.
Java Love Coffee Roasting Co. has grown into four Montclair-area locations: Church Street, Bay Street off Glenridge Avenue, Bellevue Avenue in Upper Montclair and the Montclair State University Student Center. Co-owners Jodie Thorz Dawson and Kristine Petrik started the business 15 years ago on a hunch, buying a barn full of roasting equipment in the Catskills with no real business plan behind it. The shop now turns over 1,800 pounds of coffee a week, and Petrik put the appeal simply in a conversation with the Pod: “Coffee is just the vehicle for us to get to do what we want to do.”
Bluestone Coffee Co., 123 Watchung Ave., roasts its own coffee in house and sells the beans by the bag in case you want to keep drinking it after you leave. The shop is also known around town for its brunch menu, covered in the Pod’s brunch and breakfast guide, but the coffee itself, not just the smashed avocado, is worth the trip on its own.
Local Coffee, 107 Watchung Ave., opened in 2017 and pours Irving Farm coffee alongside Tay Tea in a small, dog-friendly space with a rotating wall of local art. Regulars come back for the donuts as much as the drinks, and the dirty chai latte, a chai tea latte with a shot of espresso added, has its own following. It’s the kind of shop where the owners know your order by the third visit.
The Best spots for Working Remotely
Once the daily order is settled, the next question is where to actually sit down. Not every coffee shop wants a laptop open for three hours, but these do.
Eagle Rock Cafe, 202 Bellevue Ave. in Upper Montclair, built its identity around being a cafe and coworking space in one, walking distance from the Upper Montclair train station. It pours Intelligentsia coffee and keeps its tables set up for people who plan to stay, not just grab a cup and go.
Sankofa Cafe, 319 Orange Rd. in the South End, has become a go-to work spot for regulars who specifically mention switching there to get things done, not just for coffee. Owner Jessica Troupe opened the cafe in July 2024, timed to coincide with the town’s African American Heritage Parade and Festival, and built it to double as a community gathering place as much as a place to post up with a laptop.
Bleu Coffee, 8 Erie Street near Walnut Street. Tucked away on Erie Street, Bleu feels a little like the coffee shop you’re not supposed to know about yet. It’s spacious, calm, has extra seating upstairs and takes its coffee seriously—single-origin beans, strong espresso and a matcha that gets a lot of local love. Come here when you actually want to sit down, open your laptop and accomplish something instead of spending 25 minutes looking for a table.
Trend Coffee & Tea House, 411 Bloomfield Avenue. Trend is practically an elder statesman of the Montclair coffee scene—and feels nothing like the minimalist beige cafés that have multiplied across America. It’s eclectic, a little bohemian, filled with art, couches and personality, with coffee, tea, crepes, desserts and live music in the mix. Also important: it stays open late. In a town where many coffee shops start stacking the chairs while you’re still digesting lunch, Trend understands that sometimes adults want somewhere to sit with a latte after 5 p.m.
for Something Beyond a Cup of Joe
For a daily order or a work session, the shops above cover it. For something worth a special trip, these stand apart.
The WATERBAR by Thought in Motion, 127 Valley Road. If you’ve ever thought, “This cappuccino is good, but is the water sufficiently crystal-infused?” Montclair has you covered. The WATERBAR is part coffee shop, part hydration station, part wellness experience, with filtered water, espresso drinks, matcha, light bites and even a chakra tasting flight. You can roll your eyes at the crystals if you must, but people really like the coffee and the space is genuinely calm and inviting. Very Montclair. No notes.
Qahwah House, 493 Bloomfield Ave. across from the Clairidge theater, brought Yemeni coffee tradition to Montclair as the brand’s second New Jersey location. The beans are organically grown in Yemen, sun-dried and handpicked, then roasted in house once they arrive. Staffer Abraham explained the result to the Pod during a previous visit: “The coffee in Yemen naturally has a chocolatey taste.” Start with the Sana’ani coffee, a medium roast made with cardamom, or the Adeni chai, a Yemeni black tea blended with cardamom, nutmeg and milk.
Paper Plane, 61 N. Fullerton Ave, treats coffee like an experiment. Its menu is not built for the usual order. Pour-over is made by hand rather than pulled from a machine, there’s a coffee soda that swaps espresso into a fountain-style drink, and a rotating section of the menu is dedicated entirely to experimenting with drink temperature and flavor pairings. It’s also where Run-D.M.C.’s Darryl McDaniels partnered with founder Jonathan Echeverry on a coffee blend, a collaboration the Pod covered when McDaniels visited Montclair for the launch. The DMC blend, a mix of Dominican, Mexican and Colombian coffee, is still on the menu.
Skip to My Brew, 145 Valley Road. One of the newer kids on Valley Road, Skip to my Brew has leaned hard into the fun: ube lattes, matcha concoctions, coffee ice cubes, board games and a cozy interior with enough quirky details to keep you looking around. It feels less corporate coffee laboratory, more neighborhood clubhouse. Bonus points for making a coffee shop feel like somewhere you might actually want to hang out rather than simply conduct a transaction involving caffeine.
Honey Brewed Cafe, 150 Valley Road. Honey Brewed is what happens when a coffee shop and your dessert algorithm decide to open a business together. The menu is packed with flavored lattes, crepes, waffles, pistachio, Biscoff, Nutella and other things your dentist would probably prefer we not mention. The space is cute, it stays open later than most Montclair coffee shops, and this is absolutely the move when “let’s get coffee” actually means “I would like coffee and something covered in chocolate.”
787 Coffee, 706 Bloomfield. 787 arrived on Bloomfield Avenue with a little more swagger than your average coffee shop—and, to be fair, it has the menu to back it up. The Puerto Rican-born chain grows coffee on its own farm in Maricao, then turns it into everything from a very respectable cortado to coquito, dulce de leche and tres leches lattes. There are even rum- and whiskey-infused beans—no actual booze in the cup, but definitely enough going on to make your regular vanilla latte feel painfully underdressed. Come for serious coffee, stay because somehow you’re now ordering a quesito too.
Best Coffee to-Go
Sometimes the goal isn’t a seat or a specialty drink, it’s a cup in hand before the day starts. These two are built for speed.
Roast’d Coffee, 49 Claremont Ave., expanded to Montclair from Fort Lee and Jersey City and roasts its beans in small batches, a limited amount at a time for freshness, right in the shop’s front window. The counter service moves fast, which makes it an easy stop on the way to somewhere else without sacrificing the quality of a shop that roasts its own coffee.
Possessed by Coffee isn’t a storefront at all. Founders Tom Carrera and Steven Oliveira run a coffee truck powered entirely by solar panels and batteries, covered in ghost artwork painted by Carrera’s wife, Hiromi Nishino. The truck hits Walnut Street Station around 6 a.m., timed to the NJ Transit schedule for commuters. From there it moves through the school pickup and drop-off rush before landing outside Montclair High School by mid-morning. Carrera told the Pod he can make any drink in 45 seconds or less, and the matcha, made with Uji matcha, a prized green tea from Kyoto, Japan, has built its own following among students. Track the truck’s daily location on Instagram at @possessed.by.coffee.
