Photo Credit: Empower on Haven Facebook
How’s it going? Hope the coffee is flowing! I’m bringing you a review of a great coffee shop I found during a recent trip up to Boston. While looking for a good cup of coffee and an açaí bowl for my drive home, I was blessed to find Empower Cafe who provided both of what I was looking for.
The Cafe
Empower Café’s first location opened in mid-2020 in Woburn, Massachusetts, as a way for founder Nick Face to honor the legacy of his late mother. Nick shared his story with me firsthand, and it was truly remarkable to see how he merged his love for his mother with his passion for the local community.
Known for her baking skills and dedication to those around her, Nick told me that despite encouragement from the rest of the family, his mother was always too timid to take the leap into business ownership with her own bakery. This inspired Nick to begin offering health-focused baked goods using her cherished recipes.
In addition to these delicious baked goods, all made in house with clean ingredients and no seed oils (how awesome is that!) the cafe also offers healthy snacks like protein bites, açai bowls and smoothies made with fresh ingredients.
And, most importantly for this blogger, they also serve tea and locally roasted coffee.
The Roaster
Empower Cafe’s coffee is provided by Boston-based Atomic Coffee Roasters, a family-owned roaster operated by two brothers.
Atomic Coffee roasts all of their coffee to order and ensures fair pay for the farmers they source from. You can learn more about them and check out their full lineup of coffees here.
As usual, when I stopped in at Empower, I went with a house blend and a cold brew to review.
The Coffee
Empower Cafe House Blend
Empower’s house blend had a very mild aroma, it was not very strong but a very subtle sweetness could be smelled. The coffee itself had a light body and lacked a distinct mouthfeel.
The cup opens with light, mild coffee notes. While coffee forward, the flavors are not strong. Flavors start to become more noticeable in the middle, giving chocolatey notes that have a subtle sweetness. This sweetness carries through to the finish, where the flavor is at its strongest, still relatively mild, but a pleasant, sweet nuttiness can be found.
Overall, this was a good house blend. While the flavors weren’t particularly pronounced, the tasting notes were pleasant. The roasty, chocolatey characteristics make this a coffee that most drinkers would enjoy, and its subtle flavor profile ensures that even those who prefer to avoid bold coffees would find it appealing.
A random note, but something I appreciated was the temperature of the coffee. It was perfect! It was easy to drink right away, while still being hot.
Empower Cafe Cold Brew
Empower Cafe’s cold brew has a sweet burnt sugary aroma, with delicious toffee-like notes. While the coffee has a light body, it did have a subtle creaminess that gave it a touch of mouthfeel.
The coffee had a pretty unique flavor profile for a cold brew, with lemony notes that had a great balance of sweetness and fruity tartness. These fruity notes remained into the middle, while a touch of chocolate stayed to come forward as well. The coffee finishes with bold chocolatey notes that are more typical of a cold brew and give this a comfortable finish.
Overall, this was one of the more unique cold brews that I have ever had. It was smooth and really delicious. Empower took a chance stepping outside of the usual chocolate on chocolate approach. This made the coffee stand out and I loved the balanced fruitiness combined with the traditional chocolate that provided a sense of comfort. I think this is a cold brew that just about anybody would enjoy. It’s bold and unique, but has enough of a traditional cold brew flavor to please cold brew connoisseurs.
The Food
In addition to the coffees, I also grabbed a few food items to eat on the way home. Unfortunately, I was driving so it was not possible to take photos of each item.
Açaí Bowl
I love açaí bowls, as does the rest of my family, they’re a frequent breakfast on weekends at our house. So whenever I travel I always try to have 1 or 2 as a healthy meal.
I enjoyed Empower’s approach to açaí bowl, as the base was entirely açaí, with toppings that you select added on top. All of the fruit toppings use fresh fruit. My bowl had strawberries, bananas, granola, peanut butter, and honey. The bowl was a great size and the toppings were generously heaped on, making it a delicious and filling meal.
Protein Bites
Empower also offers gluten-free protein bites, which especially for the salted caramel pretzel offering, is very exciting! I purchased 2 of the Reese’s PB Cup and 2 Salted Caramel Pretzel.
The Reese’s PB Cup were pretty good, they were mostly peanut butter, I did not get any noticeable chocolate flavor. I love peanut butter though so this was ok with me, if you’re a chocolate lover it may not appeal to you. The texture was a tad dry, but not overwhelmingly so.
The Salted Caramel Pretzel protein bites were delicious, with a good balance of sweet caramel and a touch of salt. The texture was fantastic too. The bite itself was soft with a nice crunch from the pretzel.
Empower’s protein balls are a great healthy and filling snack, they travel well, as they survived a 6+ hour car ride, and are a convenient way to hold yourself over between meals.
Cookies and Cream Cookie
The last item I purchased was a Cookies and Cream Cookie, which after trying everything else, was unsurprisingly delicious. This may have been my favorite item I bought aside from the cold brew.
The cookie was soft and chewy with a great taste, as it was not overly sweet. It had big chunks of Oreo-like cookies along with marshmallows on top. The cookie also stayed together well and was not messy to eat, which was much appreciated while driving.
Final Thoughts
With delicious bowls, clean baked goods, and of course some great coffee, Empower Cafe is an absolute must visit whenever you’re in the Boston area. Empower’s Woburn location is only about 15 minutes from the Boston airport and the products alone make it worth the drive.
The products of course are just a part of the reason to visit Empower, the other reason is to support a truly fantastic person in Nick. Who is always looking to help his community not only by making them healthier, but also by giving back to the local community and helping highlight and support local small businesses.
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