Between Cups with Ben: Justin Melillo
Between Cups with Ben is a recurring conversation series, where Ben from the Dripos team sits down with people who live and work at the edges of the coffee world. Not necessarily shop owners or baristas, but the artists, makers, and creatives whose work still shapes how we experience coffee and the spaces built around it. Each episode is a chance to slow down for a few minutes and hear how someone outside the industry sees it, and what their work adds to it.
For the first episode of Between Cups with Ben, we sat down with Justin Melillo, an artist whose resume includes stints at Dreamworks Animation, a feature at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and collaborations with artists like Drake and Florence and the Machine. These days, Justin's most personal project has nothing to do with any of that. He's spending his mornings sketching his way through 100 coffee shops across New York City.
A hundred cups, a hundred drawings
A hundred coffee shops is a big undertaking by any measure, so we had to ask what got Justin started.
His answer was simple. Drawing is something he's done for as long as he can remember, but this particular project wasn't planned out in advance. It grew out of a habit.
How the habit became a project
Justin walked us through the routine that turned into 100 coffee shops of New York City:
- Find a new cafe somewhere in the city
- Order a coffee
- Pull out the sketch pad while sipping
- Draw exactly what he sees, no more, no less
That's it. No elaborate setup, no long planning sessions. Just a cup of coffee and a blank page, repeated a hundred times over in a hundred different rooms across the city.
There's something fitting about that. The best coffee shop projects, whether they're sketchbooks or businesses, tend to start the same way: show up, pay attention, and keep doing the small thing consistently.
Why this one's worth following
Every independent coffee shop has its own personality, in the way the light comes through the windows, the way the counter is laid out, the regulars in their usual seats. Justin's sketches capture all of that in a way a photo often can't. Watching one artist move block by block through the city's coffee scene is a reminder of just how much character these shops hold, one cup at a time.
Catch the full conversation in this episode of Between Cups with Ben, and keep an eye out for more of Justin's sketches. Coffee Shops of New York can be purchased here.
