Blue Bottle Coffee will open its first New Jersey cafe on September 9 inside Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, bringing the Oakland-born coffee brand's signature bar, whole-bean coffees and branded merchandise to space 2162 at 1 Garden State Plaza Parkway. The new cafe marks Blue Bottle's expansion into the greater New York metropolitan area and will pour everything from espresso drinks to a New Orleans-style iced coffee made with coffee, chicory and a touch of sweetness.
According to NJ.com, the Paramus location will run a Kyoto-style espresso cold-drink lineup that includes an espresso tonic and a Kyoto-style vanilla bean shakerato, alongside food items and whole-bean coffee for sale. This fall, the cafe plans to introduce a limited-edition miso caramel latte, available hot or iced, combining red miso, toasted sugar and Blue Bottle's Hayes Valley espresso, along with a companion miso caramel shakerato. The chain has said the Garden State Plaza space reflects the shopping center's modern atmosphere and its East-meets-West design philosophy, a nod to the cafe's design collaboration with Neri & Hu, the Shanghai-based architecture firm known for adaptive reuse and East-meets-West aesthetics that also designed acclaimed, heritage-focused Blue Bottle cafes in Shanghai, according to The Design Story.
Hours Built Around a Bergen County Quirk
The new cafe's hours run 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday — a full seven-day schedule that stands out in Bergen County. That's because Paramus enforces some of New Jersey's last active blue laws: under N.J.S.A. 2A:171-5.8, retail sales of clothing, appliances and furniture are banned on Sundays, but food and beverage businesses are exempt, as reported by NJ Spotlight News. Bergen County is the last county in the state still enforcing the Sunday retail closures, with the ban supported as a way to bring quiet and reduce traffic.
The rules are contentious enough that the Borough of Paramus sued the nearby American Dream mall in East Rutherford over its Sunday retail hours, seeking a court order in the dispute, the outlet's report notes. Blue Bottle's food-and-beverage exemption means its espresso bar can serve customers on Sundays even while clothing and furniture retailers elsewhere in the same mall stay roped off.
A Mall in the Middle of Its Own Reinvention
Westfield Garden State Plaza opened in 1957 as New Jersey's first suburban shopping mall and spans more than 2.1 million square feet, drawing an estimated 20 million to 25 million visits a year, per Islands. The mall broke ground on April 29, 2026, on the first phase of a mixed-use redevelopment called Modera Garden State Plaza, a partnership with Mill Creek Residential that will eventually add 575 apartments, new retail space and a one-acre public square, according to New York YIMBY.
Blue Bottle's arrival fits that shift from a traditional retail mall toward a denser, residential-style town center. The company was founded in 2002 in Oakland, California, and now operates more than 100 cafes across the United States and Asia. Founder James Freeman was working as a freelance clarinetist with Northern California symphonies before he quit music to roast coffee beans in an Oakland potting shed, according to the Oakland Symphony, eventually selling from a coffee cart at Bay Area farmers markets before building the brand into what's widely considered a pioneer of third-wave coffee.
A Different Company Than the One That Started It
The Paramus debut also lands amid a corporate shakeup for Blue Bottle. Nestlé agreed in March to sell Blue Bottle's global retail operations to Centurium Capital, the private equity firm, for under $400 million, as Hoodline previously reported. Blue Bottle's Oakland roots remain part of the brand's history.
New Jersey now joins a list of markets — including San Francisco and New York — where Blue Bottle has cafes. The Paramus opening adds to that footprint in the New York metro area, giving Garden State shoppers a taste of the pour-over culture that first built Blue Bottle's cult following on the West Coast.
