Locally-Owned Bonfire Coffeehouse Is an Eatery for All Seasons in Amagansett

The sister act behind Bonfire Coffeehouse always knew entrepreneurship was in their blood.

After all, members of their family tree — a cornerstone in East Hampton civics — have owned small businesses in Amagansett since the early part of the 20^th century, when their enterprising grandparents immigrated to America from Lavello, Italy.

Though each of the three Rana sisters ascended to their own respective success, none had ever owned and operated a business. That little fact, however, wasn’t going to stop them from trying.

“I get a call from the sisters Rana saying we want to talk about you something,” said Debbie Geppert, a former local catering business owner and the Rana’s first cousin. “’We have this idea for a coffeehouse,’ they said … I said, ‘Are you crazy? Do you really know what you want to do?’ And they said, ‘Yeah.’”

Said youngest sister Lisa Rana, the soon-to-be-retired East Hampton town justice: “I always kind of in my mind toyed around with having a coffeehouse. Unbeknownst to me, these two (sisters Dawn and Annette) had thought about it as well.”

Dawn Rana-Brophy, the eldest of the Rana sisters, said she’d been “giggling” about the prospect of running a business with her sister, Annette, for years. “Our grandparents had businesses, my parents had a business,” said Annette. “My father had said (before he passed), ‘We always thought one of you kids would do something with the properties.’ I didn’t even know (owning a business) was an option …  but it’s just something that we learned from our family. My parents didn’t do anything half-way.”

The idea, according to spearhead Lisa Rana, was to convert a soon to be available space in the family-owned commercial property (set a few steps off Main Street behind what’s currently Fini Pizza) into a state of the art coffeehouse and truly “made-local” eatery.

The sisters credited their industrious parents (they owned a beauty salon and barber shop, and then a construction firm) and grandparents (they lived in the apartment above what is now Fini pizza and ran a paint shop downstairs) with providing the framework for their business sense. However, becoming players in the ultra-competitive coffee market had them starting from scratch.

Said Lisa Rana: “We talked about it, we bandied about different ideas, then we just started the process of researching it and the strategy of getting it done. We came up with a plan … and started to get ourselves educated and trained as baristas and in the world of coffee.”

It was no crash course, either. The Rana sisters and their cousin Geppert spent two years educating themselves and doing extensive research and development to make Bonfire Coffeehouse a reality. They took business courses, honed their ideas with the New York Coffee Project, and became certified baristas along the way. It took a about a year, they said, just to develop a trio of coffee roasts they felt good about serving.

“These three, when they have an idea they go down the rabbit hole,” said Geppert, tapped by the Rana sisters as Bonfire’s head chef, baker and designer of their gleaming new kitchen. “I kind of fly by the seat of my pants, but they researched it, they do their homework. When they said they were ready to do it, they were totally prepared.”

It shows, too, in everything from the high-end equipment to the thoughtful food displays to the homemade baked goods, to breakfast and lunch savories (like soups and sandwiches and Geppert’s famous pot pies) to the gourmet coffee.

During the summer, they also make much-raved about gelato, As you would expect from a local business owner, they’re not shying away from the winter — Bonfire is open year-round and appears destined to be part of the resurgence on Amagansett Main Street.

“Something local like this is always well received,” said Geppert. “It’s been a very supportive community. There are a lot of places that do close for the winter, so we want to be the breakfast and lunch place, and we hope to anchor the Amagansett community through the winter.”

The sisters and their cousin were raised in and around the property they now operate Bonfire out of; it’s fronted by a green that, last summer, became a welcome community space, adding a new dimension to Amagansett Main Street’s walkability.

“What’s nice about what we did here on this property is that we’ve extended Amagansett Main Street, because in the summertime, those chairs and tables and the patio were filled with people,” Rana said.

The sisters take shifts working at Bonfire. They do everything from making and serving the coffee and gelato to managing and organizing to working behind the counter, all to create a comfortable, accessible local space with familiar faces that Amagansett residents can depend on for good coffee and good eats all year round.

“The crazy thing is it wasn’t long before we started getting regular customers, and you know who they are and what they like,” Rana added. “For us to be able to establish that in such a short period of time, I think is quite remarkable.”

Bonfire Coffehouse is located at 249A Main Street, Amagansett, bonfirecoffeehouse.com