I have always wished that I had a cozy spot to study like Rory Gilmore in Luke’s Diner or Rachel and Monica in Central Perk.
Well, that dream has come true, because I found one in Downtown York, and I had to share it with you.
Sips Cafe is a small, homey-feeling cafe located in Downtown York on West Philadelphia Street and in Manchester, made specifically for people looking for the perfect place to study, meet your friends, or just hang out.
The shop was created by wife and husband duo Brina and Matt Jones in early 2020, but it didn’t start how you might think it did.
I sat down with the duo on Friday, Sept. 12, and had a conversation with them about the cafe.
“Our original company, Plant Boxco, was a pandemic baby,” Brina says.
Their shop started as an online plant shop.
“We started online in 2020 as a succulent G box company. We have shipped over $ 25,000 boxes all over the country and Canada, as far as Guam, actually, and military bases. We’ve worked with companies like Google, and we realized that we were outgrowing our space, and we needed a larger space, so we opened the shop. And a big part of that was like bringing people together at a time they couldn’t be together,” Brina said.
The end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 was very hard on multiple businesses, but Brina took that difficult time and used it to thrive.
“We were celebrating birthdays and new babies and like all that wonderful stuff when people couldn’t be close. And we realized that when the world started to open back up, people loved that sense of connection. And that became incredibly important to Matt and I, and we’re like, okay, how can we continue to create this sense of community? And food just made sense.”
The store was created with the intentions of being a cozy shop created for the girls, being eco-friendly, and bringing people together.
While the duo didn’t go to school for business, it is very obvious that they both have a natural talent for it.
“We have realized that we are a bit of serial entrepreneurs. We love building businesses,” Brina said.
Brina is known as the visionary of the two, while Matt is the builder.
Brina knew what she wanted her shop to look like, and Matt helped her bring it to life.
The whole process took around 6 to 8 months to figure out. Brina and Matt informed me about the many months that go into creating the space before actually owning it.
They first had to find the perfect location, then negotiate for it, and finally make the idea come to life.
While their Manchester location is more sit-down oriented than their York location -which is more of a foot-traffic location- between the two, they get at least 100 tickets come through in a day.
The difference between the two is very much up to what people are ordering.
“Manchester is a little bit more food-heavy. People want to come and have lunch and sit and chat for a while. In York, it’s much more grab a coffee and, you know, continue on their way to work,” Brina said.
The Sips Cafe menu is very large and has a wide variety. They have things from coffee and frozen lemonade to crepes, toasties, and bagels.
My personal favorite is their dirty sodas, which happens to be how I found the cafe.
“I like a mocha chai. I’m not a coffee drinker. Which is weird; we own a coffee shop. So yeah, I like a mocha chai,” Brina said.
“Cinnamon rolls, we make them in-house, our baker makes them at Manchester,” Matt said.
Part of what makes their cafe so appealing to me is that almost everything is made by them, in their cafe, by their workers.
“Our bagels come from New York City. Everything else, we make. Our own crepe batter for our French crepes, our baked goods, etc. A lot of prep work,” Brina said.
Are there any new items that can be mentioned?
“We just launched our dirty soda cart. So that’s, like, the new kid on the block. And all we’ll say is that might not be the only thing rolling out shortly,” Brina said.
