Ready Coffee buys 10 former Dairy Barn locations to open drive-thrus on Long Island

Ready Coffee, a Hudson Valley-based drive-thru coffee business, is expanding onto Long Island after purchasing 10 former Dairy Barn locations, all but one in Nassau County.

The business, which roasts its own small batch coffee out of its Hudson Valley facility, opened its first location in 2019 in upstate Wappingers Falls. The independently owned chain has since grown to three other sites in that region, in Newburgh, LaGrange and Hyde Park.

About the move onto the Island, Ready Coffee chief executive Jed Bonnem said, "It is really an adjacent market. What we have observed in Hudson Valley has the potential to translate on Long Island."

Ready Coffee will open its first two locations on Long Island in Baldwin, at 870 Atlantic Ave., this fall and another in Glen Cove, at 96 Forest Ave. in the winter, said Emily Jordan, director of marketing for Ready Coffee.

The remaining Dairy Barn locations purchased by Ready Coffee are in Lynbrook, Hewlett, East Meadow, Franklin Square, Oceanside, Freeport, a second Baldwin site, and East Northport, the sole Suffolk location, the company said.

For the last few years, Jordan said, customers in the Hudson Valley with connections to Long Island have been asking for Ready Coffee to open locally.

"A lot of our existing customers have ties to Long Island in various ways," Jordan said. "A lot of the college students who visit our Hudson Valley stores are from Long Island. They have requested us to be here many times. It’s a natural extension."

Bonnem, who previously was a hedge fund investment manager, said the idea for Ready Coffee came from his own observations of how he and other customers bought coffee.

The coffee shop model where customers come in and sit down for long periods of time, Bonnem said, has remained popular, but didn’t provide speedy service to on-the-go customers.

"More and more we observed that that model was not as suitable for people’s everyday lives," he said.

Ready Coffee, which provides only drive-thru service at most of its locations, put a premium on speed, Bonnem said. He added that the company’s model serves customers at "three to four times" the speed of other chains, such as Dunkin or Starbucks.

"Our system has been built from the ground up to be fast," Bonnem said. "It’s how the menu is constructed, it’s how our baristas work, it’s how we take and communicate the orders," he said.

In addition to its medium roast coffee, Ready’s menu includes fruit smoothies, specialty teas, energy drinks, and shakes.