A new chapter for the town of Bennington as the Roasted Bean closes and Prospect Coffee House opens in its place
1 Prospect Street, North Bennington, Vermont: A community staple; a Saturday morning hangover favorite; a peaceful spot to study. The latest addition to Pangea’s growing empire—A modern classic and a favorite coffee spot for locals. The birthing place of Prospect Coffee House. Known for the best breakfast sandwich in town and now, the burial ground of The Roasted Bean. As of November 11th, 2022 the fan-favorite cafe known to Bennington College students has officially passed on and metamorphosed into Prospect Coffee House. I wanted to look into this new era knowing its whole history. Where it’s been, the new direction it’s taking, and the controversy surrounding the sudden change in management.
Personal investment on the business itself varies from student to student. Some people, like the current first year class, may have never heard of “The Bean,” and to others it is an extension of the campus. For the two employees I interviewed, once staff at The Roasted Bean and now pioneering baristas at the new Prospect Coffee House, it has been a complete workplace reset. Choosing to remain anonymous in their interviews, we’ll call them Billy and Bonnie. Billy and Bonnie have seen a wide swath of achievements and fallbacks of both Pangea and The Roasted Bean during their times of employment. Their trajectories as part of the crew of The Roasted Bean have been extremely different, but both their divulgences revealed something pivotal to me. These in depth interviews lent me a personalized look at the inner workings of The Roasted Bean. Through my research, I have come to the belief that the coffee shop’s eventual demise was perhaps fueled by the inattention of one singular person.
Angelica Harrison’s The Roasted Bean, started with a humble beginning in 2016. It first made its existence known as a kiosk set up outside Jensen’s Restaurant in Downtown Bennington. Then, the business having caught traction, Harrison graduated to a temporary space, Kevin’s Pizza Shop (this stint only lasting seven months). The business found its final residence in November of 2020; you guessed it, right next door to Pangaea. The Bean didn’t reach its full glory until it landed in this location, and soon after they were open for business Monday through Sunday. It was a quick success, but that success started to come at a cost. This was the beginning of a declining work environment and deteriorating team.
The boutique coffee shop served a plethora of baked goods, a wide menu of cold and hot beverages, as well as breakfast and lunch options. The food was done in partnership with Pangaea, meaning that they were prepared in Pangaea’s kitchen and by their employees, which during the time was a completely separate entity from The Bean. This was a strong partnership, and the quality of goods was unparalleled in Bennington. However, the two businesses working in tandem did not come without a hindering divide.
As expressed by my interviewees, behind the scenes things were falling apart. Around the tail end of the summer of ‘22, everything started to go downhill. Billy expressed that, “Angelica stretched herself thin. The business just grew so fast.” Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Harrison was juggling two successful businesses simultaneously (Harrison also opened White Creek Deli in the state of New York a few months prior) or possibly it was tension between her and the bigger business hovering above. Billy told me, “She rented under Pangaea but owns the brand of The Roasted Bean. She somehow got evicted. I’m not really sure how… There was tension between Pangea and Angelica. Pangaea did not like her at all, and had been waiting for this moment. All the Roasted Bean employees had no idea about this, so it was a shock, but all of Pangaea knew. It was this division, and everyone under Angelica was completely clueless.”
Bonnie concurred with Billy when she added, “None of us knew the switchover was happening until it shut down, and then there was that crazy Facebook post and everything went insane.” You can excavate details of the Facebook controversy on your own time, but synthesizing the information from my interviewees it seems to have happened in the proceeding. Harrison had a lot to say about the Facebook debacle, starting with a post by Pangea announcing the opening of Prospect Coffee House. The post came across as offensive and dismissive to Harrison. Pangaea, noticing the ostensible tone and took it down. Of course the post was not taken down before Harrison reposted it with commentary, to her own Facebook page. From here, the online community took off, taking sides and making alliances. There was speculation over if the drama would affect the opening of the Prospect Coffee House.
The divide between Pangea and The Roasted Bean was not the only aspect transforming the environment into somewhat of a pressure cooker. For Bonnie, it was Harrison’s attitude and unrealistic expectations that convoluted the workplace. When I asked about Bonnie’s position, she immediately answered without hesitation, “I love The Roasted Bean. I love being a barista. I love the people that come in. I love the people I work for. It was just that me and Angelica had a super frustrating relationship. It was unstable.” She expressed that The Bean was a wonderful place for community members and students alike to just “chill and hang out,” it served so many purposes to the community at large.
Another issue Bonnie brought up was, “Switching shifts. Even if it was three days in advance and I got all my shifts covered… that would lead to really long texts about me being a bad worker. That would be a week suspension, and I wouldn’t be able to work. I was paying my rent over the summer, so then I wouldn’t have money for groceries. That happened two, maybe three times since July.” Harrisons maladministration hadn’t just become a detriment to the business’s efficiency but a harm to certain employees on a personal level. Bonnie spoke in length of the thorny relationship that Harrison seemed to have fostered with a number of her employees.
Bonnie went further into multiple stories that illustrated Harrison’s managing style, “I would close and if I forgot to clean the bathrooms, it would be a huge deal. That was hard because there was no standard set in place that you knew how to follow. It was more like ‘Do this, and tomorrow I’m gonna tell you to do something else’ and then if you don’t do that, you’re bad. We had a very complicated relationship.” She expressed that, “It was a really toxic environment for certain people and there were others that Angelica just let do their thing. It felt targeted.”
Unfortunately the internal toxicity was not where the issues ended. Bonnie painted a clear picture of the chaos that was The Roasted Bean in its last couple of months:
“Angelica was running her other business and there were these moments where we (The Roasted Bean team) were like ‘Well, what are we doing?’ and she was like ‘Well, what are we doing?’ Anyone would come in and want a drink that we should have and it was just never there. Coffee beans would come in late, syrups wouldn’t come in, that kind of stuff. Nothing was streamlined, we would always be out of milks. It sucks to be working and having to tell somebody that you are out of like eight things. It’s losing a sale and then we end up losing a tip. We were just losing money. We didn’t have a place to get inventory either, it was just like a group chat between us all. And then we would get it whenever.” Harrison’s vision of the business was optimistic, and at times very successful, but the execution was less than professional.
To an oblivious customer like myself, I had no idea of the strife going on in front of my eyes. I was just getting coffee but all the while, behind the scenes—as Billy put it perfectly— “Pangaea… (was just) waiting for this moment…” and at some undisclosed date, Harrison was “evicted.” The two employees I spoke to however seem hopeful for the future under Nick Disorda and his wife Lani Deponte-Disorda supervision, although many loose strings were left with Harrison. The employees of The Roasted Bean were left with a text from Harrison, “‘Just wondering if you all got offered a job from Nick?’” Billy and other staff members texted back saying yes and “She didn’t reply to any of us. No one knows what she’s up to.”
A fittingly strange last interaction. Possibly it was not the best way for the Disorda couple to leave the relationship? Regardless of the morality of the situation, it seems that, internally at least, it is unanimous that knocking down the wall between the two businesses seems the smartest thing to do. Bonnie said, “It feels good, he (Nick) is super open and communicative. It’s kind of genius on his part because he’s got everything. He owns the espresso machine, the baristas are solid in their jobs and made real relationships with customers. He’s just like changing the name and shifting some things around… Mastermind!” The Disorda couple certainly knows how to divide and conquer, now owning the restaurant, the cafe, and Powers Market across the street.
As previously noted, the remodeling in preparation for Prospect Coffee House has been a collaborative effort and Bonnie says Nick has been asking the team questions like, “What changes do we want to see? What do we want to improve?” Bonnie believes this will “lead to a more successful business that can do better than the last one did.”
Sadly, that is not where the story ends. Billy’s eyes lit up, remembering something. “Oh my god, I forgot about this…” Billy started to tell me an unsettling story.
“I, over the summer, got Covid. I was also working at Powers so I was there working for Nick and also working for Angelica. I found out my roommate tested positive, and went home to test. I texted my boss at Powers and I was like ‘I’m really sorry I have Covid,’ and she was like, ‘Take your time. Whatever you need, let me know. It’ll be ok…’ I texted Angelica and she asked me to continue to come to work. She didn’t really want me to wear a mask because she thought it looked weird… I was really really sick. I couldn’t get out of bed and when I couldn’t come to work she threatened to fire me and was like ‘This doesn’t follow calling out protocol,’ but I was like, ‘I have Covid…What do you want me to do?’” As Billy tells me this story, I think of the legality of forcing an employee to come to work with covid– and maskless. It is clear the Roasted Bean was at a boiling point. There is no way the business could have continued working under this management and these conditions.
Come November 11th, I attended the grand opening of the new Prospect Coffee House. Immediately upon entering the cafe—the walls still painted a deep sangria red (thank God!) with the same dancing gold moldings that border and become the ceilings—I began to spot the subtle differences. New paintings have been brought in, a refrigerator sits in the middle of the space (now selling seltzers, juices, bottles of water,etc), there is a modern tea setup in the back of the barista station. I ordered my usual: bacon, egg and cheese on a portuguese muffin with avocado and a Gnarly Chai. I noticed that my chai tasted differently, so naturally I enquired. They have started to work with new and dependable caterers like Saratoga Tea and Honey Co. It seems that Pangea’s firmer handle on where they get their supply is already having a positive effect (Hence, their milk stock is plentiful.)
I was greeted with a smile by the new manager, Chloe. According to Bonnie this was a well deserved promotion. The new management has released some sort of grip and the business is flourishing. There’s a sense of a new mobility, a new life, and as I sit at Prospect Coffee House finishing up writing this, I am reassured that they are headed in the right direction.
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