Modcup will be opening their latest location on the ground floor of Everton at 420 Marin Boulevard. Image courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle.
A Jersey City-bred business that started out as a coffee cart will soon be opening another café that will feature a massive roastery, allowing them to further expand their brand.
Modcup recently signed a lease agreement for ground-floor retail space at Everton, more formally known as 420 Marin Boulevard, in the heart of Downtown Jersey City. The 1.3 million-square-foot, mixed-use tower will include 802 rental apartments and 115,000 square feet of retail space anchored by a brand new Shop Rite that will replace the aging grocery location across the street.
The coffee brand has secured 1,843 square feet of space at the building in a deal that was brokered by GRID Real Estate. Modcup currently roasts their beans out of a facility at 25 Senate Place but the Downtown location will allow them to expand their roastery operation even further.
Modcup’s 25 Senate Place location. Image courtesy Modcup.
“The new location will be anchored by a 35-kg Loring Coffee Roaster and will give us the ability to compete with the world’s best roasters while staying deeply rooted in Jersey City, the place that shaped us,” said founder Travas Clifton in a statement. “This is about building world-class infrastructure without losing the soul, values, or community that got us here.”
Modcup is a specialty coffee roaster and café company based in Jersey City, founded in 2013. The business initially started as a single mobile coffee cart slinging cups in Hoboken, with Clifton eventually purchasing a 1969 Citreon coffee truck to run Modcup out of in Jersey City’s Exchange Place neighborhood.
The early days of Modcup in their mobile coffee cart. Image courtesy Modcup.
Clifton has since transformed Modcup into a local coffee empire, including three cafes, a roastery, and a brisk online business. Modcup’s first brick-and-mortar location has been a staple on Palisade Avenue in The Heights, while their most recent expansion was a Hoboken spot on 4th Street.
Their iconic “Caffeine and Dreams” signage will be coming to Everton in 2026, inside the second phase of the Metro Plaza redevelopment. The endeavor looks to transform a parking lot and one-story retail stores into a mixed-use high-rise neighborhood better suited for a city downtown.
Everton will feature over 20,000 square feet of publicly accessible green space consisting of plazas, a new dog park, and more along Marin Boulevard. The total plans for the Metro Plaza redevelopment call for six million square feet of development and 5,500 residential units.
Other components of the plan include a centrally located park and new roads that strive to rejoin the city’s historic grid network to better connect with nearby neighborhoods.