Bengal News West Reporters
Andrew Trautman has worked at several cafes and coffee shops in the Buffalo area for years. Justin Smith has worked for several companies and has a finance degree from Notre Dame. Together, the two best friends decided to put their business strengths together to create a coffee shop and espresso bar called Remedy House.
Trautman, 30, along with Smith, 29, opened Remedy House, 429 Rhode Island St., in the Five Points neighborhood back on Nov. 20 right near other businesses in the area such as Urban Roots and Paradise Wine. So far in their short amount of time, the two friends have made their small business an interesting place in the neighborhood.
Prior to the store’s opening, they used to run a pop-up shop in the city and made a mobile port called the Remedy House Mobile Espresso Bar. “A few years ago, we started the [Remedy House] business by doing pop-ups. We had a mobile espresso bar that went around to festivals, private events, and other things. It got our name out there, got our feet wet. We would just serve simple espresso drinks and iced teas,” Trautman said.
After doing that for a while, the landlord of the Rhode Island Street building that Trautman is friends with said that their business should come into his building.
“We did a pop-up almost a year ago inside this space,” Trautman included. “Once we got inside here, we felt that it was just right that we needed to come in. Ever since then we’ve been working towards signing the lease and building this out.”
Smith, who’s been a friend of Trautman’s for four years, has a background in corporate finance and had no previous experience in the restaurant business. He left the business lifestyle, which he grew to hate, and wanted to do something different with his skills.
“I wanted to open some sort of restaurant, bar, café, something, with somebody that’s passionate,” Smith said. “I’ve always had an interest in it and in interest in providing quality things to people. Seeing Andrew’s passion for coffee and frankly how good he is at preparing coffee drinks and his knowledge about coffee. We started talking about making our own business.”
Before Remedy House started, Trautman worked as a barista at SPoT Coffee, where he met Ariel Brucato, who now works at Remedy House. She said she loves the intimacy of the location and how small the building is.
“[Smith and Trautman] are the hardest working humans I’ve ever met in my life,” Brucato said with a chuckle in her voice. “I don’t know how they function so well without sleeping as much as they do, but they’re killing it, they’re doing such a great job. It’s impressive.”
