photo | coutesy of Cordella's
Cordella's aims to stand out from its competition by putting a lot of thought and effort into the quality of their drinks.
Updated: April 21, 2025
Brewin’ up a business: The growing community gathering place off Worcester’s June Street
photo | EDD COTE
Husband and wife Andy Jimison and Jess Rao, along with Ellie Ellis and Alecia Bishop, opened Cordella's coffee shop in April 2024.
It’s not hard to find a cup of coffee in Worcester.
In a city with 27 Dunkin’s, five Starbucks, and countless other diners, small chains, independent shops, and gas stations serving coffee, competing to win a fair share of morning commuters and others looking for a caffeine-infused pick-me-up could seem like a daunting task.
But in a retail space on June Street, four locals have banded together to form Cordella’s coffee shop.
Opened in April 2024, the shop has navigated challenges like local permitting and climbing coffee prices to quickly move toward becoming a staple of the neighborhood, regularly drawing around 80 customers a day to its cozy confines.
One key ingredient in the shop’s success is fairly straightforward: its focus on high-quality brews.
“Their coffee knowledge goes beyond what most people probably understand,” said Josh Cormier, wholesaler for Orange-based Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee.
Beyond the quality of the coffee, Cordella’s has made its mark by becoming a third place, a place where locals can relax and connect outside of home and work.
“They're extremely good at what they do, and they've created a vibe in there that is super inviting to everybody,” Cormier said.
Not resting on their laurels, Cordella’s ownership embarked on a bold crowdsourced fundraising campaign kicked off on the business’ one year anniversary on April 1. The goal of the campaign is to allow the shop to tear down the walls and expand into the abutting retail spaces, which further amplifies the business’ ability to be an all-day gathering place for the neighborhood , with the end goal of creating space for a bar and food options crafted on-site,
Born without a middle name
Cordella’s is the brainchild of Andy Jimison, owner of neighboring Materia Arcade & Video Games and MallRats arcade in Downtown Worcester.
When a flower shop operating in the storefront next to Materia Arcade went out of business, Jimison’s landlord asked if he wanted to take over the space.
“I always saw this stretch of road here as having a lot of potential if you get the right businesses in here,” he said, “I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do, but I did think a coffee shop was a missing piece of the puzzle on this side of town.”
Jimison is originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Cordella’s name is a tribute to Jimison’s great-grandmother, who ran a cafe. She was born without a middle name but later gave herself the middle name of Cordella.
Jimison convinced his wife Jessica Rao and cousin-in-law Ellie Ellis to join the venture as co-owners. The final piece of the Cordella’s ownership puzzle was Ellis’ friend Alecia Bishop, an experienced coffee industry figure with more than 15 years of experience, who is the brain behind the shop’s creative coffee creations.
“The original plan was just to consult them and set them up for success, and then I just didn't leave,” said Bishop, who is set to head to Texas to lead two workshops at the Specialty Coffee Association’s convention in late April.
Bishop’s experience has allowed Cordella’s to have an ever-rotating menu of whimsically-named specialty brews.
The current spring specials include Livin’ La Vida Coco, an espresso and coconut-based beverage, and Guava Lamp, a bubbly concoction made with matcha and guava hibiscus syrup. The menu is designed to be friendly to both vegans and those with dietary restrictions, and all syrups are made in-house.
A hot commodity
One challenge to running a modern day coffee shop is the price of the beans.
Consumer coffee prices have climbed dramatically in the past five years, from $4.17 per pound in January 2020 to a peak of $7.39 in March 2025, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
This climb has a significant impact on the coffee industry, said Cormier, the coffee wholesaler.
“It's been challenging,” he said. “We've obviously been at this for a long time, and we've never seen prices kind of yo-yo and spike like this.”
Like a lot of consumer goods, the price of coffee has been climbing in recent years.
Already dealing with fluctuating coffee costs and the ubiquitous presence of big coffee brands and at-home coffee machines, shops like Cordella’s have another obstacle to overcome: tariffs.
Even as the messaging over tariffs from the White House seems to change by the hour, it seems unlikely proposed levies on coffee-producing nations like Vietnam and Colombia will boost stateside coffee production; only the climates and soils of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and a small swath of California have the right conditions for coffee to grow.
This limited space, combined with higher labor costs, means less than 1% of coffee consumed in the United States is grown domestically, according to the National Coffee Association, with American-grown beans costing much more than those produced overseas.
“If the tariffs are implemented in order to protect jobs in this country, that's one thing,” Cormier said, “but the fact that we can't even really grow [coffee] here means we were hoping for it to be excluded.”
Growing the brand
After a year of operation where the biggest challenge was keeping up with the shop’s rapid growth and the litany of other challenges stemming from starting a small business, Cordella’s owners feel the time is right to expand their footprint, so they can take advantage of their rented space beyond the typical hours customers are seeking coffee.
On April 1, Cordella’s announced a fundraising campaign to allow the owners to embark on expanding the shop's offerings to include a bar and food options, which would be prepared on-site.
photo | coutesy of Cordella's
Elisabeth Morgan, former employee at Redemption Rock Brewing, assists Cordella's with its social media accounts.
“When you look at it like, ‘Oh, we're only a year old.’ From that singular perspective, it's definitely scary or wild to think about,” Jimison said. “But if you come in on a Saturday, all these tables are full. It's good to have people coming and going and keeping the flow going, but on the other hand, you want to make sure it’s a place where you can hang out and do whatever.”
The expansion efforts will involve knocking down walls separating Cordella's from Jimison’s Materia Arcade and space formerly occupied by Rewind Video, an attempt by independent journalist Bill Shaner to bring back the concept of video rental stores.
Cordella’s efforts have raised $19,563 from 158 contributors, as of April 18, with the end goal of raising at least $50,000 by the campaign’s scheduled end date of May 1.
The campaign is being organized through NuMarket, a Boston-based firm helping food and beverage companies grow by crowdsourced campaigns, which allow contributors to gain in-store credits in exchange for contributions. Contributors to Cordella’s campaign will receive 120% of what they contribute back in the form of credits, which will be distributed in installments over the course of a few months to spread out the economic impact on the shop.
“We understand [things are] tight for everyone,” Bishop said. “We don't have money in our budget to do this, but we want to do this. We want to continue to grow and to give the community a bigger, better space.”
Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.
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