- May 16, 2024
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Debra Jean’s Organic Coffee Café has opened up in the Flagler County’s Hammock.
Located at 5927 N. Oceanshore Blvd., the coffee shop is owned by local siblings Jeremie and Kyle Purdy and uses mindfully sourced beans and natural ingredients, through the siblings’ coffee company, Hammock Coffee Company.
There’s been a bit of a learning curve, but a lot of support from the community, Jeremie Purdy said.
“We've been working for almost two years to build up to this,” she said. “So it was a lot of emotions. It was a lot of excitement.”
The Purdys named the restaurant after their mother, who died in 2018. The restaurant opened on March 1 and Purdy said she and her brother have had a lot of interest from the community, even selling out of all of their bagels on the first day.
“We've had increase our order 25% each week,” she said. “…We’re expanding our menu weekly.”
The café serves a variety of coffee, including lattes and and what the Debra Jean’s menu calls “FooFoo’s,” an iced, sweet drink made of milk, syrups, espresso and whip cream. Among the treats on the food side of the menu, it has kosher, vegan certified bagels flown in from New York from a 50-year-old immigrant family and croissants flown in from France.
“Because no one makes croissants better than France,” Purdy said.
The Purdys put a premium on sourcing all their food and ingredients organically, from the coffee their company makes to the food at Debra Jean’s. They try to source food as local as possible, she said, though finding organic, commercial-scale food has been hard. As much as possible, Purdy said she tries to make the food in-house.
Purdy said the organic ingredients have an obvious impact on how their coffees tastes, making their coffee less acidic than people might assume.
“We're just being very conscious about what we're serving people,” Purdy said. “All our syrups are organic. Anything that goes in a coffee cup is 100% organic.”
The straws and cups themselves are also recyclable and biodegradable. Purdy said eating organically and prioritizing environmentally-friendly methods is how she and her brother were raised — their mother used to make everything from scratch
It may make costs more expensive and the profit margins smaller, she said, but this is the right way to do it.
“When I started off doing this with my brother,” she said, “I told him I said if we can't do this organically and do it the right way don't want to do it.”
Purdy said their mother always wanted to have a pastry shop of some kind. When designing the cafe, Purdy said she and her brother put in place all of their mother's favorite things to remember her by.
"When you walk in here," she said, "anybody that knew my mom can definitely feel her spirit in here."
