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High Octane in the fast lane to fuel customers
By Kalea Hall
BOARDMAN
In the year and a half since High Octane Coffee Co. opened, the local business opened a location inside Akron Children’s Hospital, had a franchise location open and also a new main location.
The business is in the fast lane like its owner, Joe Sylvester III, who is both a racer and a roaster.
“I was into anything I could get my hands on to go fast,” Sylvester said. “I started riding dirt bikes with my dad. It just fit. I liked the individuality. It was an escape.”
Sylvester, a Boardman native, recalls his life as a racer turned roaster from inside his new coffee shop on the corner of West Boulevard and U.S. Route 224.
He’s wearing a “Death before Decaf” shirt, sitting next to the blue side of truck bed from a 1964 Dodge pickup that lines one side of the wall at High Octane in Boardman. The truck bed is a junkyard find that Sylvester fabricated to fit into the shop.
“It tells a story of why High Octane, why the brand and why the image,” Sylvester said. “It’s so unique and off the wall.”
From the start, Sylvester wanted to create a different type of coffee shop. Here, customers won’t find a calm atmosphere with traditional coffee shop jazzy music, but an upbeat one with rock music.
“There’s only one High Octane,” Sylvester said. “There’s only one place to go to get this image and vibe. It’s just a totally different take on the coffee shop.”
High Octane gets its personality from Sylvester who’s been racing since he was 12. He’s raced BMX bikes, motocross, monster trucks and now he’s added sprint cars to the list.
Sylvester performed with monster trucks for eight years full time and still performs part time.
“I traveled all over the country,” he said.
All that traveling and performing – and getting the record for longest ramp jump in a monster truck at 237 feet and 7 inches – is tiring.
It requires fuel, also known as coffee.
“Coffee was a constant variable in my life,” Sylvester said. “It was needed to perform.”
Sylvester got into fresh roasted coffee.
“As I got older, I realized it would be tough to be a racer for life,” Sylvester said.
Coffee, he decided, would be his next profession. He knew he wanted a different coffee shop in the Youngstown area, and he knew he wanted to roast his own beans to offer fresh coffee.
Sylvester already had business experience through his work with his late grandfather’s business, Joseph Sylvester Construction and Sylvester Properties.
But he had to learn how to roast.
“I just knew in order to control the quality of my product and truly be an actual artisan shop, I needed to do it in-house,” he said.
In May 2016, Sylvester opened his first location in Canfield. A year later, he opened a location inside Akron Children’s Hospital on Market Street and not long after that the High Octane franchise location off the interstate in Austintown opened.
George and Beth Syrianoudis of Canfield liked the vibe of High Octane and the coffee so much they decided to operate a franchise location.
“I liked the uniqueness,” George said of High Octane. “I liked the fact that it was not the average coffee shop.”
It also helped, too, that George, an engineer of 31 years at the General Motors Lordstown Assembly Complex, is a car guy.
“I think it’s poised to break out,” George said of High Octane. “A coffee shop is a tough business. It’s the most popular business to go into, but [people] do it not knowing what’s involved. You have to build your brand. Joe is really good at building the brand. I have a lot of confidence in him and the brand.”
George and Beth added their own touches at the Austintown location including a menu of lunch items with soup and sandwiches.
“I think with our location and the travelers, especially people who come off the highway, want more than just a cup of coffee,” George said.
In November, the new High Octane in Boardman had a grand opening event with a ribbon-cutting.
The location features a drive-thru, as well as several new menu offerings, including breakfast burritos and a full line of ice cream from Baker’s Golden Dairy in New Waterford.
The location is a former service garage and it still feels like one with pictures of cars and monster trucks on the wall, auto magazines on a table Sylvester made with auto parts from a junkyard, and the High Octane name.