New Jersey shut down the popular Remedee Coffee in Atlantic City

ATLANTIC CITY — There is sad news for people who have enjoyed buying locally roasted beans or a cup of iced coffee, sometimes flavored with local blueberries, out of a garage just off the Boardwalk in Atlantic City’s Lower Chelsea neighborhood.

The state of New Jersey has stepped in, shutting down the popular Remedee Coffee run by Amanda and Colie Escobar, two sisters who obtained a cottage food license two years ago to operate out of their family’s restored beach block house on Bartram Avenue.

“We wish we could have kept the garage up and running,” said Amanda Escobar. Add Remedee’s garage era to the list of good things that, “in New Jersey must come to an end,” she said.

But why? Not unlike when the popular Fish Heads food truck that operated successfully out of Gardner’s Basin was shut down due to the state’s Green Acres laws, the State of New Jersey’s Health Department has found that, technically, the Escobar sisters were operating beyond the bounds of the cottage food permit that allowed them to roast and sell coffee beans.

When the sisters went to renew the license before this summer’s season, the state wrote back that they had checked their Instagram account and concluded they were operating more as a “pop up weekend coffee shop,” and rejected the renewal of their license.

» READ MORE: Popular Fish Heads truck shut down in dispute with the state of New Jersey

Remedee Coffee was set to open for the season last Saturday. Dalya Ewais, director of communications for the state Department of Health, responded in an email that “Remedee Coffee Roasters cottage license was revoked because it was operating in violation of 11.7 (a) of the Cottage Food Rule.”

That section of the Cottage Food Rule says that a license can be revoked if portions of the rule are violated. Ewais did not say what portion of the rule Remedee Coffee was found to be violating.

The sisters announced on instagram that they had “fought it and lost” with the state and “have been scrambling to find a place to operate, temporary or permanent” in Lower Chelsea or nearby Ventnor.

The Escobar sisters have been roasting and selling coffee where their parents, who restored the Victorian house on Bartram, shared cups with neighbors. The cottage food law in New Jersey went into effect in October 2021, making it possible for people to create and sell goods out of their homes, with some restrictions.

The new law eliminated the requirement of a commercial kitchen and regular health department inspections for home bakers and food makers to sell their goods. More than 2,000 businesses have been granted a permit, according to the Department of Health’s website.

» READ MORE: Remedee Coffee brings a micro batch roastery to a beach block garage in Atlantic City

The law grants New Jersey cottage food operator permits for $100 that could apply to a wide range of home-crafted goods, including baked goods and candy, teas, coffee, dried herbs and seasonings, dried pasta and fruit, honey, nut butters, fruit empanadas, vinegars and mustards, waffle cones, and pizzelles.

It gave the Escobars the opportunity to open Remedee in the garage under their porch, where they sold cold brew, coffee shandy with homemade blood orange syrup, a shandy with blueberries straight out of Hammonton, and bags of freshly roasted beans sourced from Colombia, where their father, an electrical engineer, is from, to a stream of bike riders and walkers just off the Boardwalk on weekend mornings.

Bakers are not permitted to use anything considered TCS — temperature controlled for safety — in fillings or frostings. Escobar said nothing that they sold would have fallen under this category. They did not use dairy in their coffee products, she said.

Escobar said the language in the law is vague with respect to selling brewed coffee as opposed to just beans, but that after being turned down by the state, the sisters decided to pursue the retail space instead.

Amanda Escobar said the sisters are close to signing a deal to open Remedee out of a full retail storefront.

They had been looking in their Lower Chelsea neighborhood and, after running into high rents and uncooperative property owners, expanded their search to the North Beach section of adjacent Ventnor (a town where another set of sisters just opened up the buzzy new Two Sisters Vietnamese Eatery).

Amanda is hoping the popularity and uniqueness of the Remedee garage operation will carry over to a more traditional setting.

“If the only reason we were ever cool is because we sold coffee out of a garage, then we’ll learn that lesson the hard way,” she said.