Rachel Nieves has found a new space for her buddies.
Nieves, the co-owner of Buddies Coffee, went viral earlier this year after she received word from her landlord that her coffee shop would be getting a rent increase and a competing café was moving in next door.
She tearfully filmed a plea for support from her community — and New York City stepped up. The people of Williamsburg, Brooklyn — and beyond — flocked to Buddies Coffee, where Nieves and her partner Taylor Nawrocki served coquito lattes and other Puerto Rican-inspired dishes and drinks. (Even Joe Jonas showed up.)
But even with all the support, Nieves tells TODAY.com she had to close the Williamsburg location early and look for a new spot for Buddies. And after months of preparations, Buddies Coffee is reopening in Manhattan in the coming weeks, with a soft-opening planned for Oct. 11, she says.
“We did a lot of self-healing, having to close down the store after getting all that traction and all the support from basically the world. It wasn’t really received the best from the landlord, so we were asked to close up earlier than we expected to,” Nieves says. “From one day to the next, we were, like, on this high of having lines out the door and then being sat down and told, ‘Well, you need to leave in 60 days.’”
The End of an Era in Williamsburg
Nieves and Nawrocki started Buddies Coffee as a coffee cart during the pandemic in 2020. The idea was simple: Create a place where people could go meet up with their buddies.
Buddies Coffee eventually grew into a roasting operation with a storefront in Williamsburg, an area with strong Puerto Rican heritage that has become increasingly gentrified.
In early 2025, Nieves and Nawrocki got news that would change nearly the entire scope of their business: Their landlord was raising their rent, and another coffee shop would be opening in the space next to theirs.
Nieves, in tears, filmed her reaction to the news and posted it on TikTok in February.
“I don’t know if I sound so stupid, crying and complaining,” she said in the video. “But it just feels like you just can’t win. The small people can’t win.”
The TikTok racked up more than 7.8 million views, and New Yorkers quickly stepped in to help save Buddies Coffee, Nieves says. But despite the support, Nieves says her landlord wasn’t pleased with all of the attention, and she was asked to close the store in 60 days — sooner than her lease was scheduled to end.
“I was so sad, and it was this really weird feeling of knowing that essentially, the world is cheering me on, and to the outside, it looks really beautiful, but inside, I was dealing with a lot of loss and pain and confusion and anger,” she says.
Nieves says she didn’t allow herself to feel any of that pain for a long time, focusing on closing up shop in Williamsburg and greeting her customers with a smile, as she was still grateful for their support.
“It feels like like a really bad breakup, but not a breakup where either party wanted it,” she says, describing the bond she had with the Williamsburg community. “The 60-plus community has a really close place in my heart, and knowing that I’m not serving them coffee every morning and hearing about their day, or hearing old stories about them, that that makes me really sad, and I cried a lot.”
“But I find comfort in knowing that each of them confirmed that regardless of where we go, that they’re gonna find a way to make it to the new Buddies location,” she adds.
When the Williamsburg location closed in May, Nieves says the team focused on their wholesale roasting operation while they scouted a new brick-and-mortar location.
After the original Buddies location closed, she says she was able to take time to reflect and think about where she wanted the new location to be — and she wasn’t sure if it would remain in Williamsburg, where she “felt out of place.”
“I always felt like I was trying to prove myself, explain myself, explain my menu,” she says. “And it wasn’t until I kind of showed my cards and was really vulnerable, where everyone truly showed me that they were just there for me. So, for this new Buddies, all I want to do is just continue that … I don’t need to explain. I just want to show up as me.”
Getting Ready to Meet New Buddies in The East Village
The new Buddies Coffee location has a special place in Nieves’ heart: she refers to the East Village as her “stomping grounds” as a teenager.
“When I go, get off the train or I’m walking around there, it just feels like home,” she says.
Coffee lovers can find the new Buddies Coffee location in Alphabet City on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C, Nieves says, where across the street, there’s a community garden called “Los Amigos.”
“There was a Puerto Rican flag hanging right in the park, and I was like, ‘What are the chances that across the street, it’s called ‘Amigos’? We’re called ‘Buddies’!” she recalls from when she first toured the space.
At the new location, Nieves plans to keep the classics from the Williamsburg location, like coquito lattes.
“I want to bring a drink that’s familiar to people, and I want to introduce new people that have maybe never even heard of coquito,” she says. “I feel like the East Village is constantly changing, like there’s a lot of new people moving in, in addition to the people that have been there forever. So I’m excited to share coquito with a whole different group of people.”
Nieves is also bringing back Buddies’ specialty quesitos (Puerto Rican cream cheese pastries), which are made by her cousin.
She’s planning a soft-opening for the new location on Oct. 11, which coincides with her birthday, and when the neighborhood is hosting a block party.
“I just want to embrace all the new people, introduce ourselves people — that’s that’s all I hope to do, is to keep the momentum of just real community and authenticity and unpretentiousness,” she says. “I’m not trying to go in there and bring the neighborhood something they do now. I’m here to kind of blend in and maybe just add my little sparkle.”
Nieves thinks back to a trip she took to Puerto Rico after the Williamsburg location closed, where she drew inspiration for personal touches in the new café.
“I wanted it to look as if you were walking through an old town in San Juan, and you look at these buildings that may have been sun-bleached for a long time,” she says of the new spot. “It’s still new, but it has the old feel. I have a mosaic on the floor, which is a personal nod to floors in Puerto Rico that are always, like, extravagantly tiled and colorful, but also the East Village is home to a lot of mosaic art.”
While Nieves is bringing a taste of Puerto Rico to the East Village, bringing Buddies to the island is a goal on the horizon, she says.
“If I could go and have something in Puerto Rico and uplift and work with local farmers and roast that coffee, or even do a collective … I feel like nothing would else would feel more like home than doing that or just creating some sort of space there,” she says. “The goal is is very much to figure out how to have a hub back in Puerto Rico as well.”