City League makes coffee and lasting connections

On a weekday morning inside the Whale Building on 53rd Street, sunlight pours through tall factory windows onto a turquoise Diedrich drum roaster, stacks of burlap coffee sacks and rows of five-gallon buckets filled with roasted beans. Along the walls, framed Slam magazine posters, Nas and Common albums, and a handmade coffee bag design by founder Dane Demchak’s son hint at the big role sports, music and family play in the life of City League Coffee Roasters.

City League began in a Sunset Park garage in 2018, when Demchak and his wife, Lindsay, started roasting coffee on a small machine while he was still working in local nonprofits. A former staffer at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, he says people came in, got the help that they needed and then moved on with their lives. He felt proud of his work, but longed for more enduring relationships with his clients.

“I always wanted to build something that lasted many, many years, relationships that we could build,” Demchak said. “And I felt like coffee would be such a great way to do that. Everything about it is very active service, and having a physical location I felt like we’d really be able to build a community hub.”

The name “City League” comes straight out of that desire to make a home turf for neighbors.

“City League came from this idea that whether you love sports or not, everybody has this memory of playing pickup basketball, pickup baseball,” he said. “At that time it was this beautiful community of people. We were all different, but we were kids and you didn’t care.”

As a Sunset Park resident, Demchak said it mattered that City League’s roasting space and café stay close to home. After a few years renting roasting time on Long Island, he moved production into the Whale Building.

For Demchak, coffee’s power lies as much in ritual as in flavor. He talks about the drink as something that ties people back to earlier generations.

“As I talked to more people I found that everybody had this connection with coffee that many times brought them back to their parents or their grandparents and I love that,” he said. “I love that people had a strong connection with it, and that whole act of prepping it, serving it. It’s just a beautiful way of serving and bringing people together.”

That attention extends to the farms that grow the beans. City League works with farmers across Latin America and Ethiopia, looking for high-quality coffee produced by people who are treated fairly.

“We try to work as close as we can with the farmer, making sure that the work that we’re doing here with the community is also being done there,” Demchak said.

On the bar, his personal favorite brewing method is the pour over, a slower, hands-on way of serving that fits with the roastery’s emphasis on care, attention and flavor.

While the beans roasted at the Whale are available online and through local partners like neighborhood CSAs, many end up at City League’s café at 6808 Fourth Avenue. The bright shop, which opened in early 2023, sits in the same building that once housed Blend: Coffee + Co-Work. Demchak was a supplier for Blend’s owner, Justin Mattera. In 2022, the two joined forces, and the shared vision for a neighborhood hub eventually became the City League café.

Manager Monica Valenzuela came to City League with a background in nonprofit arts administration and a side baking project she runs with her sister. Together, the two co-founded Little Boxes NYC, which provides the cookies, quiches and other baked goods stacked in the café’s pastry case. Their treats now appear at other neighborhood spots as well, including Liebre Cafe on Seventh Avenue, but City League remains home base.

Valenzuela recalls first walking in for her interview with a box of cookies under her arm, hoping either to land a wholesale account or a barista job. She ended up with both. Over time, she said, the work behind the bar has been less about making drinks and more about witnessing people’s lives.

“There have been so many life moments,” she said, recalling everything from regulars celebrating promotions to a day when a woman went into labor in the back area of the shop. While some people see barista work as “an entry-level or high school job,” she sees it differently.

“I think we’re much more like a therapist or a bartender in the way that we develop relationships with the people who come in, and are there to celebrate the highs and the lows,” Valenzuela said.

City League is also very much a family operation. Valenzuela’s sister also works there as a barista, and Demchak’s son creates artwork for some of the bags and cans filled with City League’s whole beans.

Both the roastery and the café double as venues. City League has hosted art shows, live music, mutual-aid events and fundraisers, treating the shop as a platform for local artists and organizations. On Saturday, Dec. 13, the roastery at the Whale Building, 14 53rd Street, will host a one-day market from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with coffee, a bar sponsored by Sixpoint Brewery, live DJs, food from Meat Asia BBQ, and in collaboration with Brooklyn City F.C., mini-futsal games for the kids. Local makers will set up shop with art, apparel and home goods.

For Demchak, Valenzuela and the rest of the City League team, it is another chance to live out the mission that started in that Sunset Park garage, using coffee, and the people that gather around it, to build a lasting community.