Alumna's OQ Coffee Co. Named Best in New Jersey
"Food & Wine" magazine recognizes Highland Park roastery for serving up top brew in the state
"For our shop and roastery to be recognized in this way is not only an affirmation of what we are doing but also a recognition that we are doing it extraordinarily well. I also feel encouraged as we have strived to build a coffee business that is centered on sustainability, education, community and excellence."– Jessica Schellack
Located in Highland Park just across the Raritan River from New Brunswick, OQ Coffee Co. has become a popular study spot and pre-class pit stop for the many graduate students who live nearby.
Becoming a coffee shop owner may seem a step off the logical career path for an urban planner. But for Jessica Schellack, a graduate of Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy ( MCRP ’11), and her husband Ben, cofounders of OQ Coffee, their work is not just about brewing socially and environmentally sustainable coffee but also building community.
Originally started as a small operation roasting beans in the Elijah’s Promise kitchen in 2010 while Jessica Schellack was at the Bloustein School and Ben was working on an advanced degree at Princeton Theological Seminary, OQ Coffee Co. was recently named the “Best Coffee in New Jersey” by Food & Wine magazine.
Schellack was full of gratitude when she learned of the recognition. “For our shop and roastery to be recognized in this way is not only an affirmation of what we are doing but also a recognition that we are doing it extraordinarily well. I also feel encouraged as we have strived to build a coffee business that is centered on sustainability, education, community and excellence.”
The shop’s mission is to get people to fall in love with coffee by offering high-quality, fairly sourced coffee, increasing awareness of sustainable coffee practices, cultivating community and promoting social action.
With an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Michigan, it makes sense that Schellack has always spent time thinking about space and how people relate to the space around them – especially how a building or business will affect those living in the surrounding community. Prior to pursuing her city and regional planning degree, Schellack was living in Colorado and working at a third- wave coffee roastery.
Speaking as a panelist at the Bloustein School’s Women in Entrepreneurship event recently, she talked about her experience in Colorado and remarked that during this time, she “developed an interest in the relational aspects of coffee.” The owner of the roastery sourced coffee directly, she said, and would go out to meet with the farmers; Schellack was fascinated by this practice and wanted to learn more about the economic and social aspects of coffee.
She worked with the Rutgers Center for Green Building while at Bloustein, which, coupled with the experiences and skills she learned in classes, helped with getting OQ off the ground while still in school. Focusing her master's degree in regional planning on transportation planning, Schellack learned how to read and analyze data and to assess the city’s demographics to better understand the community the business would serve.
Schellack joined the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s highly competitive Leadership Fellows program upon her graduation in 2011 and then went on to work in the capital projects division with PATH, all the while continuing to work with her husband to grow OQ. As the shop – and her family – expanded over the next five years, she left the public sector to be with her family and focus on managing operations, sourcing and brewing environmentally sustainable coffee all the while building community at OQ full time.
So what’s next for OQ coffee? “We have been, and are continuing to look for, opportunities to grow, primarily in locations where we know we can build community around excellent coffee,” Schellack said. “A larger roastery to increase wholesale production and establishing another shop is what we have in mind. For me, while I wear many hats from day to day, it is at this stage of the process that I am putting on my urban planner hat, to take a really good look at the people in a place and consider how we can serve them well.”