Growing up in Japan, there were always two bottles of iced coffee in the fridge. Her mom's had no sugar. Her dad's had sugar. In the summer, Mami Perez would sneak a glass from her dad's bottle, pour in some milk, and drink it cold. That was coffee, for a long time.
Now she's five years into managing Joe's Bryant Park and BCG cafes, and the iced coffee habit has held.
Black, no milk, unless it's cold out — then drip. What's changed is what she does with coffee. Mami doesn't just serve drinks. She creates them.
Her instinct for flavor comes from an earlier chapter, a previous role where she was responsible for developing cocktail menus. She still goes back to that well. Cocktail menus, she shares, are useful because a drink built around spirits can almost always be translated: pull the alcohol, add espresso or tea, and something new exists. The Strawberry Basil Spritz came from that kind of thinking — strawberry and basil already belong together in food, so why not here? The Yuzu Elderflower Spritz has an even longer history, starting life as a cocktail at that earlier job before it found its way to Joe.
When she's not running a cafe, she's reading — self-improvement, psychology, leadership. Not for the job title. For what she says it connects to: how to be a good human being. She also makes a very good lasagna. And oxtail, picked up from her Dominican partner's side of things. Her two cats, Niko and Mac, go by their full names only when they're in trouble — Mac’s is Macaroni — and both are, in her words, chunky.
On her recent vacation, she didn't go anywhere. She stayed in, did a guided journal — the kind that asks you to dig past the surface, figure out what you actually want — and made a vision board. Money. A home. Cats. Relaxation. And her own cafe. The concept has been taking shape for a while: a bodega-slash-cafe hybrid, Japanese goods alongside her own drinks menu. She'd open it in Jersey City. Less competition. Better rent.
The vision board is already made.
