Albany-based craft coffee startup launches
Motor Oil Coffee, an Albany-based speciality coffee company, has officially debuted for in-person and online sales, with four blends available in whole bean and ground forms.
Motor Oil Coffee was co-founded by Rich Fazio and Joe Bonilla a few years ago when one of the co-founders had a coffee business in upstate New York. They used their expertise of the coffee retail industry, as well as their experience founding and working with brands during their day jobs at a creative strategy firm, to launch Motor Oil Coffee.
The name came from one of the co-founders’ visits to classic car shows and auctions across the United States, from Pebble Beach to Kissimmee, where the people organising these events would say the same thing whether a car sold for $1 million or $1,500: “This coffee tastes like motor oil and I love it.”
With that simple word, Fazio and Bonilla discovered that their passion for autos and auto-art resulted in a desire for a strong, yet rich cup of coffee.
In a press statement, Bonilla remarked, “We’ve worked to build dynamic retail brands during our ‘day jobs’ in creative strategy, so it was just a matter of time until we got into this ourselves.” “We wanted to make sure that not only does our coffee taste wonderful, but that it also feels nice when you drink it. We wanted to make sure our coffee hit the sparks, whether you had our decaf or our Guatemalan, because coffee can leave a lengthy aftertaste or the ‘shakes.’ And I believe we have done so with Motor Oil Coffee.”
“As a father of three small children, I frequently found myself running on empty, and the coffee products I was using just weren’t cutting it,” Fazio continued. “I wanted to design a set of mixes that tasted fantastic but were also strong enough to get me moving, and now my kids had to keep up with me,” I said when the opportunity to build this brand with Joe presented itself.
