Cold-Brew Sisters Open Up Cafe Inside UES Museum

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — When sisters Tina and Yami Correa first moved to New York City almost two years ago, they had a great idea brewing.

"Coffee is what brought us to New York," Tina, 27, told Patch.

And now, the sisters are opening their first cafe, called SisterYard, based on their popular coconut cold brew coffee inside Frick Madison after years of marketing, experimenting and many hours at a Smorgasburg booth.

"The SisterYard--a local, women-run business--is the perfect addition to our temporary home at Frick Madison and the neighborhood," said Joe Shatoff, deputy director & COO of The Frick Collection. "The passion and excitement Tina and Yami have for all things coffee has made them such a wonderful fit for our space and audience."

The sisters, who left their native Venezuela for Miami in their teens, used to host cooking classes in their Miami backyard. They called it "SisterYard."

"Yami has been a chef for several years," Tina said, "the classes were a side gig."

The pandemic forced the classes to end, but the sisters poured their creative energies into the perfect cup of joe.

"We started cold brewing coffee because it makes the coffee a little nicer," Tina told Patch, "it doesn't make it as acidic because you're not heating it up."

Their next goal was to figure out how to make the coffee sweet without adding sugar, which overwhelmed other pre-bottled retail options available at the grocery store.

"We wanted to drink something everyday that really made us feel good about what it was made with," Tina said.

With their experience fermenting kombucha, the sisters started experimenting with plants and fruits they had growing in the area to find a perfect sweet brew, until they got to coconut.

Tina says they both "honestly thought it would be another experiment gone wrong because the coconut water can be delicate. But we kept playing with ratios. And we came with this recipe and it's the original recipe from 2020 that we still haven't changed, because it's the one that works."

The sisters found success in Miami selling their coconut-sweetened cold brew online, but soon had dreams of moving to New York City, where Tina said "the coffee culture is much stronger."

After arriving in March 2021, the sisters had a goal to open a cafe eventually, but they wanted to ensure their coffee had a strong customer base first.

The sisters soon snagged a booth later that summer at the popular Brooklyn food market, Smorgasburg, to see if their coffee could hack it beyond online sales.

Every weekend, Tina and Yami would spend long hours in their booth and soon found that their coffee was brewing up excitement and soon became a flagship vendor for Smorgasburg.

"Everyone within the community and within the organization loved the product," Tina said. So much so that the sisters were asked to extend their offerings to a Smorgasburg outpost in their hometown of Miami.

That's when someone at Frick Madison caught a whiff of what the Correa sisters were up to. The museum soon asked them to open their first cafe inside their Madison Avenue location.

Since opening in November, Tina said, "we've been welcomed by members of the museum as well as local people from the neighborhood. And we've seen more regulars than ever while being in this space."

The cafe also offers food, including a fresh, homemade focaccia sandwich with ricotta, honey, marinated artichokes, house-made walnut pesto and Campari tomatoes.

SisterYard is more than sisters — Tina and Yami's bother, who just recently moved to the city, helps out, too.

Tina says it's been so much fun to work with her sister, who she also lives with and calls her best friend, a result of a closeness developed while immigrating during their formative years.

"We felt very alone at the beginning," Tina said, "so we learned how to build a strong relationship. And we have a connection for food that we grew up with that we feel we carry within ourselves, being away from family."

"Part of that helps us with our relationship. It doesn't mean it doesn't get overwhelming because we do share a lot of time together," Tina said.

"One of the biggest things I would say I'm grateful for is to be able to share this big idea and small business with my sister."