From early childhood days, as far as I can remember, my mother sat next to a gas stove on the floor connected with a propane tank, with a round yellow metal roller made from tin in her hand. The roller had a curved handle at the end of it. She placed coffee beans inside it, lit the gas stove, and rolled it above the fire. I always asked myself; did she have to do this every week? The reason I always asked myself this is because when my mom used to roast the coffee beans, the whole house smelled like coffee. As a little kid, coffee was not my favorite…

I grew up overseas, and in a family with household income of … maybe $50 per month.
My family never had the money to spend on anything except of course for coffee…

Early on, surprisingly enough, my dad never cared for coffee. With time however, he was more accepting to it, and he used to make my mom the Turkish coffee early morning. The coffee would be ready for her when mom woke up. When I saw that for the first time, it was a huge surprise to me. Not only because my dad was drinking coffee with mom, but because my dad spent all his life in the army, and he never did anything when it came to household stuff. It was the mentality of “It is the woman’s job…” To see him boiling water and preparing Turkish coffee the first time, I thought I was having a dream… I guess that is the power of Love, if you want to call it this way.

Fast forwarding 16 years later, I travelled to the US to continue my education. I went to Rutgers University and I graduated with two engineering degrees. Got a job in IT… Even though, the jobs in IT were all good, and I did well, my passion was toward something else… It was dance and coffee. Without going into too much detail, I am a dance teacher… With passion for coffee…

How can you go wrong if dance and coffee are your passion?

Throughout life, we go through many experiences… I realized that you need to live by the three Cs rule. To make it in life, you will need the three Cs:

Courage
Common Sense
Coffee

I live by that.

Welcome to our coffee shop – CafeMerica. We do hope you appreciate the taste of a good coffee and you are as passionate about it as we are.

Robert Chukrallah