Regulars at The Nitro Bar in Providence have come to expect a line out the door as they await their weekly dose of caffeine.
In its eight years, the business — which now has three operating locations in Rhode Island — has become a “hot commodity,” Nitro Bar regular Becca Day told The Herald. Day, who just moved to Providence a few months ago, attributed her constant visits to the coffee shop’s unique environment, rotation of seasonal flavors and kind employees.
“It’s full of life,” said Lauren Roche, an employee at Nitro Bar. “A lot of people from the neighborhood come in, so we know someone every day.”
The local coffee shop was established in 2016, when co-founders Audrey Finocchiaro and Sam Lancaster built what Finocchiaro dubbed “a shitty box on wheels.” The couple maxed out Finocchiaro’s $1600 credit card in the process. “You can’t let the dollar amount in your bank account dictate how you feel about yourself as an entrepreneur,” Finocchiaro said.
In the beginning, Finocchiaro and Lancaster rolled their cart around the streets of Providence with minimal success, often ending days with negligible profits. Once they started hiking up College Hill, though, the enthusiasm of Brown students “really changed the trajectory of the cart,” Finocchiaro said. Sales spiked and the pair was eventually approached by investors to jumpstart their wholesaling journey.
In Providence, they opened up their first permanent location inside Dash Bicycle Shop on the West End in 2018. In Newport, they opened a location on Thames St. in 2019 and another on Pond Ave. in 2021. Each of the three operating locations has its own “vibe,” according to Finocchiaro.
Now, the brand has gone viral on TikTok, amassing over 418,000 followers since 2020. Their most popular video has almost 17 million views and 2.6 million likes.
The Providence location is the company’s first and smallest. The store on Pond Ave. in Newport “has more sit-down, larger vibes” with more tables and space, while the Thames St. location boasts a “more refined menu,” she said. The stores may each offer a different niche, but for Finocchiaro, they’re “like children. I love them all the same.”
Finocchiaro “never expected to have that kind of reach,” but “the brand somehow caught some attention and kept it rolling,” she said.
Since their TikTok account gained traction, sales have increased by 60%.
When she creates content, Finocchiaro tries to “show up authentically,” working hard to create content that she’d want to watch herself. It’s about “posting the content that you feel good about and trusting yourself in the process,” she added.
But above all, the coffee shop prioritizes “people, quality and the finer things in life,” Finocchiaro said.
“It’s always been important to us to treat our team like family,” she added, and “transcending that onto the customers that come in.”
And that effort seems to be paying off. “My favorite thing about working here is the sense of community,” Roche said. “All of my coworkers and I are super close.”
While Finocchiaro and Lancaster are excited to expand in the future, they want to keep their sights set on where they got their start. “We’ve gotten approached a ton to do franchises, but it's not something that Sam and I are interested in,” Finocchiaro said. “We like having control over the environment and everything that goes into it.”
But that doesn’t mean the shop has stopped rolling forward: The Nitro Bar is currently looking for another location. “We love our location over on the West End, and never want to leave there, but we definitely would love a second location in Providence,” she said.
For Finocchiaro, it’s “crazy” that so much has changed since 2016.
But it seems like more change is imminent. Nitro Bar’s website proclaims that the cart’s next stop is “the moon.”
Maya Kelly is a Metro senior staff writer who covers health and environment. When she's not at The Herald, you can find her hanging from an aerial silk, bullet journaling, or stress-baking.
