Voyager Espresso Is Where You’ll Find Great Coffee and Futuristic Vibes

For Black History Month, we’re profiling Black-owned businesses in the neighborhood. Find the whole series here. 

Head to the basement of 110 William St. near the John St. entrance and you’ll find Voyager Espresso, one of the coolest coffee shops in the neighborhood. The name is a nod to author and astronomer Carl Sagan, who infused his pursuit of the cosmos with a sense of wonder. Appropriately, the subterranean shop is part space-age, part experimental coffee laboratory, where your single-origin sourced cold brew comes in a beaker glass with a side of palate-cleansing sparkling water, and the barista prepares your order from behind an oval-shaped coffee bar resembling a satellite.

Husband-and-wife duo Will Ayala and Angery Mejia have been running Voyager Espresso since 2019, bringing their espresso expertise and down-to-earth demeanor to the otherworldly space. The pair got their start in coffee about a decade ago in Providence, Rhode Island, where they operated a mobile coffee cart at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. That’s when Ayala discovered that by interacting with strangers through coffee service, he had the power to turn someone’s mood around — and it was infectious for him, too. 

“Coffee created an avenue for me that was unique and fulfilling,” he told the Downtown Alliance. “I got to talk to people, make an impact on their day.”

Regulars and coffee snobs — and, until recent construction temporarily shuttered the John Street entrance, subway riders — find their way to Voyager for high-quality espresso drinks, and stay for the warm and neighborly chit-chat.  

Ayala lends his attentiveness to customers and the product alike. He envisions Voyager as “a gateway to educate people about what coffee could be, without all the sugar and milk nonsense.” 

Voyager sources beans from all around the world, and works directly with international coffee farmers, focusing on ones with sustainable practices that give back to their communities, like Finca Bet-el Farm located in the Western Andes of Colombia. The beans then get roasted at a small roastery in Hawthorne, New Jersey. 

The pour-over offerings, which Ayala describes as the shop’s “pride and joy,” currently feature three different Finca Bet-el varieties, which are processed either using a “natural” or “washed” drying method. No clue what that means? Ayala will walk you through it. 

“I’ll typically ask, ‘Are you more of a wine or a tea person?’ If you say tea, I know that you’d lean towards a lighter-bodied coffee with floral notes, so I’ll recommend a washed method; if you say wine, I’ll suggest a natural one, which is more syrupy and fermented,” he said.

Don’t miss Voyager’s specialty latte menu, where single-origin espressos and house-made syrups combine in decadent concoctions, like the Smoky Star Dreamsicle, made with orange peel syrup, vanilla syrup smoked with hickory wood, a dash of floral bitters and black lava sea salt, finished with whole milk. 

If you need a bite to eat with your beverage, Mejia’s menu of elevated toasts and breakfast items has you covered. Try the burrata grape toast with marinated grapes, creamy burrata and house-made kale pesto, or the pumpkin porridge, a pumpkin puree blended with oat milk, steamed with chai spice and honey, then mixed with oatmeal porridge and topped with dried apricots and figs.

Customers inspired to drink Voyager’s selections at home can join the Voyager Club, a monthly subscription service that ships the shop’s freshly roasted single-origin, espresso or drip blends. And if you’re looking to up your coffee game, Voyager offers classes in barista skills like pour-over coffee, latte art and coffee tasting.