Pack Katisomsakul had $27 to his name when a friend's bag of coffee beans changed his life. Six years later, the nationally ranked brewer is opening Newbery Street Coffee Roasters' first permanent café at 240 Harvard Street near Coolidge Corner, targeting an October opening.

A Kickstarter campaign closing Aug. 31 had raised $29,505 from 207 backers as of Aug. 26, surpassing its $25,000 all-or-nothing goal. The stretch goal is $50,000.

Katisomsakul founded the roasting company in 2023 with his wife, Thunya Penbumrungvong. The couple searched for more than a year across Cambridge, Jamaica Plain and the Seaport before found the Brookline storefront, formerly home to Cremeux French Patisserie, which closed Dec. 30, 2025. According to the company's Kickstarter blog, the lease is signed and construction is underway.

Katisomsakul placed third at the U.S. National Brewers Cup Championship in both 2024 and 2025, and fourth in 2026. He earned an honorable mention at the 2025 Global Coffee Awards and was named to the Sprudge Twenty Class of 2026, an annual list of leaders in global specialty coffee.

"Coffee saved my life once, when I had only $27 in my entire life," Katisomsakul told Sprudge in May. "Then one day, a friend from northern Thailand sent me a bag of coffee … When I drank it, it felt like a light."

That moment came in 2020, after his Bangkok travel-tech startup collapsed during the pandemic. The beans from his friend's uncle's farm tasted like cherry juice and tea. He has said the experience sparked his mission to put Thai coffee on the global map while lifting the farmers who grow it.

Katisomsakul has described visiting a Thai coffee farm in 2020 where the farmer lived in a wooden house with no concrete walls or windows. Two years after he helped the farmer sell beans at specialty prices, the family had built a concrete home with an indoor bathroom and water heater.

"It's just a small thing we did, but it's making such a big impact for others," Katisomsakul told Brookline.News in an Aug. 25 interview.

He has since connected Thai growers with producers in Colombia to share farming knowledge, and in 2022 co-organized a fundraiser that planted 750 Geisha and Java coffee trees on Thai farms. At the 2026 U.S. Brewers Cup, he competed using coffee grown from those same trees.

The Harvard Street café will serve slow-brewed pour-overs alongside signature drinks including Es Yen, Azuki Matcha and Black Sesame Latte, plus house-made salt bread. The interior, designed by Penbumrungvong's best friend, an interior designer based in Thailand, is built to discourage laptop use and encourage conversation. Katisomsakul's current team of brewers consists entirely of former pop-up customers who asked to join.

Newbery Street has been running weekend pop-ups at Merai Bar, 14 Harvard St., typically from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Kickstarter closes at 11:59 p.m. Aug. 31. No official opening date has been set beyond the October target.