Of all the things said about the Upper East Side of Manhattan—whether it be that the teenagers act like they’re in Gossip Girl or that the women love to wear athleisure and stroll their double strollers down Lexington—there’s no denying that it is filled with great food and cafés. Practically every other storefront down Third Avenue has something to do with the restaurant or food business, and most of them are pretty decent. Among these many, many cafés and restaurants is Caffé Bacio, a hidden Third Avenue café between easts 70^th and 71^st with a simple awning that only the regulars know about. Caffé Bacio is owned and managed by Dalia Mosaffi, an Israeli immigrant who moved to Brooklyn in 1977. Dalia bought Caffé Bacio over twenty-two years ago to explore areas that were different from the office setting she’d become so accustomed to. She definitely found what she was looking for, and this cozy little coffee shop with three tables and little standing room in the corners of the Upper East Side persevered through the ever changing economies, social structures, and politics of the last two decades by changing with the times.

A Brief History

The IRT Third Avenue Line, better known as the Third Avenue El, first began service in 1878, allowing all of the inhabitants of Third Avenue to easily access public transportation. The area was dilapidated and, arguable, shady, until the 1950’s, when, slowly, changes began to happen. The elevated subway on Third Avenue went out of service and was completely dismantled by 1955, and, without the access of the subway, the area lost the hoodlums and miscreants that typically come with close proximity to public transportation, indicated by the high murder rates in the 90’s and the gloomy look that the graffiti gave. The streets then became wide and bright and skyscrapers became all the rage; developers started buying out the older buildings and properties and rebuilt them into magnificent and large structures that beautified the spaces.

While it is a fact that an overwhelming majority of New Yorkers choose public transportation as their primary mode of transport, especially when there are countless stations close to wherever you are, a large portion of them walk their way to work. Everywhere in New York City is within a three-minute walk of, minimum, two subway stops, which allows for foot traffic at every small café or shop, but in census tracts 126 and 128, the two tracts that Caffé Bacio is located between, an average of 28.6% percent of the population choose to walk to the workplace. Given the tendency of New Yorkers to love their morning coffee, the 28.6% of them being walkers makes Dalia’s busiest time of the day the morning rush before work. And still, while half of the population choose the subway as their primary mode of transportation, the fact that the establishment is located between two large subway stations, the 68th and Lexington 6 line and the 72nd and 2nd Ave Q line, doesn’t deprive them of those New Yorkers who prefer public transportation to walking. Those transportation ratios remained the same back until 1990, when Dalia bought the café from the previous owner.

Originally, the Upper East Side, consisting of Lenox Hill, Yorkville and Carnegie Hill, was farmland that stretched between 68th and 74th streets. What is now Lenox Hospital opened up in 1868 as the German Dispensary to serve the mostly German immigrants living in the area. Robert Lenox purchased land for a farm in 1818 in what is now Lenox Hill. He slowly divided the land and sold the land to developers, and when the Second Avenue and Third Avenue Els opened in 1875 and 1878, this area started to grow as it enabled more people to move up into this area.

By the early 1900’s, development increased on Park Avenue and like Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue was geared towards the wealthier crowd. As each decade passed, the entire Lenox Hill area became middle to upper class. Robert Moses completed the East River Drive in 1934 and regular construction on this highway created what is the FDR Drive today. These two developments increased access to the Upper East Side. With more accessibility, the Upper East Side kept growing as an elite residential destination for people that work in the city and for those who want to enjoy the nightlife of New York City.

Population & Diversity

Unsurprisingly, being that the café is located on the Upper East Side, the population density per square mile in a consensus of multiple census tracts in the area is a whopping minimum of nine thousand people, as of the 2010 census. The population density in the area has remained the same, between nine thousand and fifteen thousand people per square mile, only letting up in the early 19^th century, where it dropped to between one thousand and three thousand per square mile in the 1820 census. The high population density gives Dalia access to a lot of foot traffic and walk-ins, in addition to her regulars at the café. The diversity of New York City gives the café a lot of different types of people, who order many different types of foods and coffee styles. The beauty of coffee is that it can be altered to cater to the individual’s preferences or ethnic tastes, which is what arguably helps many cafe’s stay afloat. The ability to make both “white-girl frou frou extra milk frappucinos” and heavily concentrated Turkish coffee at the same time gives a general advantage to coffee servers. The ethnicity of the population therefore proved to be a huge contributor of the cafe’s success.

Between 1980 and 2010, the percentage of whites in the area dropped from 95% to 60%. While a third of the population is still a large amount, the other 40% is comprised of many different race groups combined; 5% black, 10% Asian, 10% Hispanic or Latino, and the remaining 15% is a conglomerate of mixed races and other smaller race groups. Despite the non-white groups being a small percentage, the fact that the population density is so high means that the small percentage still translates into a lot of different kinds of people in each group.

Poverty & Wealth

In the data collected between 1980 and 2015, between 40 and 60% of the people living on the Upper East Side were earning at or above the highest level of income observed. In addition to that, over 20% of those people were employed in finance, real estate, or insurance. Fortunately, for Caffé Bacio, the poverty level in the surrounding census tracts is at or below one percent of the population as of the 2010 census, which gives the café even more access to paying customers. The high saturation of wealthy people enables the café to cater to a population that can afford the cut-up fruit, parfaits, and small delicacies. In 2000, the poverty rate was only one degree more, making 1980, due to a recession, the highest poverty rate in Caffe Bacio’s time, settling at five percent of the population. This overall dominance of financial adequacy in the people living in the Upper East Side exposed Caffé Bacio to an abundance of paying customers which helped them survive in this location for the last twenty-five years. Although it is true that many of the households earning below the poverty rate did not have the means as to report their census information, the sheer fact that the streets weren’t riddled with homeless, according to calculations, indicates that the poverty rate would not have been much more had everyone been represented.

But when the café first opened in the 1990’s, there was a small percentage of households with an income of more than 150,000; there was a clear dichotomy between the incomes of the people living below and above Third Avenue. From the time it opened, the café was able to cater to all people, despite their incomes. Because, as cafés typically are, Caffe Bacio carries small pick-up food that are very reasonably priced, the income of the area attracted both groups, of higher and lower financial status, to opt for smaller cafés as opposed to overpriced Starbucks or glorified coffee shops. After all, everyone can use a delicious cup of morning coffee.

Third Places

Friendly faces are always a must, and, with the aforementioned Blair Waldorf wannabes that the Upper East Side is riddled with, those faces are hard. Dalia told us that while there are those entitled customers, 97% of her clientele, in her opinion, are nice to the workers. Delia, a worker of Dalia’s, told us that one of her favorite parts of the job is the social aspect. There are these people that come in everyday and order the same exact thing, and through that, worker-client relationships are forged. Delia told us that, “when the customers come in, I already have their coffee ready.” Small eateries like Caffe Bacio give a sense of belonging for these residents and commuter students from the three surrounding colleges that feel as small as ants on the scale of Manhattan.

Giving Back

We have established the statistical data that kept Caffe Bacio in business all these years, but, despite that, there must be something else of substance that distinguishes this specific cafe from the hundreds of failed cafes around the city. When we asked Dalia what she thought the factors were, she let us in on the secret that she is always looking for something new and different to add into the menu at Caffe Bacio. Two of these new and different products are Baked By Bibi’s Healthy Treats and Fresh From The Heart. Baked By Bibi’s, or BBB’s, are a mother and daughter owned business in Brooklyn that bake wafer thin cookie brittles that are homemade in all different kinds of flavors, that include a range from Graham Cracker, for the customers dedicated to simple, to Green Tea Matcha, for the hipsters. Fresh From The Heart make healthy cookies in “guiltless” flavors (and are, honest to god, delicious) that go perfect with a Caffe Bacio cup of coffee as a morning snack. While this brings in new things that give an advantage to Dalia, it also aids the support of local and small businesses, like her own.

Caffe Bacio isn’t an overly decorated place. It’s a small space with a few photographs on the wall. (Bacio means kiss in Italian so all of the photographs are of famous kisses and it’s the cutest thing ever). But that’s the beauty of it. To be happy with your coffee and the person who makes it for you, you don’t need embellishments; bells and whistles are unnecessary. Dalia says that the hominess of the cafe makes it authentic and down to earth. A couple of tables and chairs are all that is needed to appreciate a good cup of coffee and a place that knows you when you walk into the door.

What's Next?

Caffe Bacio is a small but impactful shop on Third Avenue between East’s 70th and 71st. Dalia, the owner, is truly a person who loves serving coffee and pastries to the people of the Upper East Side. Despite the history of her specific location and any corporate challenges thrown her way, she managed to make Caffe Bacio a must-visit. Dalia always strives to deliver what her customers like most—a comfortable environment where they can get their coffee from someone they know, and from someone who knows them. While there is something to say for franchised coffee shops, they don’t foster the kind of individualized attention that smaller places do, in general. My Starbucks barista may know my name and how I like my coffee, but I don’t know his, and I, like many other people, feel better knowing that my money is going back into the community to support other local businesses. We know Dalia and we know Delia and we know that what were getting wasn’t processed thousands of miles away—were getting quality, house-roasted coffee and homemade food. It may be true that Caffe Bacio is known only to the people who know it, but we all appreciate it. Caffe Bacio is the best kept secret of the Upper East Side, a place that will, with the ever-changing world, always be relevant because good coffee, great service, delivered with a smile will never go out of style.

What’s next is to continue doing the amazing job Dalia, Delia, and all the workers are doing serving coffee and pastries, because it seems to work. As Dalia says, she’s always looking to bring in something new, something that will distinguish her from all of the other coffee shops down Third Avenue. When setbacks, like being slow in the summer, occur, you deal with them and try something new. The secret to staying alive in cutthroat NYC isn’t being cutthroat. It’s not about fighting fire with fire. It’s about knowing how to handle the cutthroat situations thrown your way. Storefront Survivors isn’t merely a documentation of the remaining independently owned businesses in New York; its a wonderful exploration of the city’s hidden gems and the “kisses” you get for finding them.

References

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Rothman, J. (2017, May 24). New York City Crime in the Nineties

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Williams, K. (2014, February 20). How the Upper East Side Grew Out Of Three Historic Enclaves.