Food & Wine named this little Beverly coffee shop the best in Massachusetts, surprising even its owners

It turns out the cappuccino crafted at Kid Dream is excellent, and the black coffee is just as good. The place, tucked away on a side street, is bright and appealing, and the staff friendly. Beverly is a small city awash in coffee choices, but Kid Dream more than holds its own.

Even so, the “best coffee” designation was “a complete surprise,” to the owners, Kalvin and Abi Reynolds. “I was at a bar” last spring says Kalvin Reynolds, “and the bartender congratulated me. ‘For what,’” he replied, only to be told that Kid Dream, which he and his wife opened in 2021, had been designated best in Massachusetts. About a week later, he says, he got a call from someone at F&W telling him about the award, but giving no more information.

The Reynolds are serious about their coffee. There is a small selection of baked goods from A&J King in Salem and Bonny Breads in Beverly, plus toasts — avocado, cinnamon and sugar, nutty, hummus — all done, Reynolds says, with “many toasters.” But the focus is the coffee, featuring three to four different roasters at a time. Broad Sheet of Cambridge is almost always on hand, as is Ilse from Connecticut; recently guest roasters have been Little Wolf Roasters of Ipswich and Tiny Arms of Lowell. The Reynolds carefully curate how to use these all over the menu, from drip to pour over to espresso and iced. He emphasizes that the couple doesn’t want to be overbearing with coffee lore, but are dedicated to sourcing the best they can find and then “letting the customer lead the conversation.”

The fact that Kid Dream has gained regulars — with people coming in asking “What did you give me yesterday?” — and coming to find the coffee shop “a little off the beaten path,” is important to the Reynolds. They modeled Kid Dream, which was named because both have wanted to open a coffee shop since they were kids, after European cafes, especially those in Sweden, and also the California coffee scene. “We want people to walk over here and be surprised,” he says.

Despite their youth — Kalvin is 30 and Abi 29 — each has years of coffee experience, he says. He started at 15 behind the counter at Dunkin’ Donuts, before roasting for Atomic Roasters in Danvers and Beverly and Little Wolf. Abi started at a coffee shop in her late teens before managing a coffee shop in Lynn and a coffee bar for a tech company. The brick-and-mortar Kid Dream opened after the couple had coffee carts and popups for years in local breweries and for weddings. When they decided they wanted a permanent home for their coffee, they scouted around, finally finding this redeveloped building with 10 apartments upstairs. His father and brother did the build-out of the 500-square-foot café, which features an airy, light décor with pops of pink and turquoise and leopard drawings in the bathroom. “I didn’t want it to be dark and moody.”

The years of popups meant that they already had a dedicated clientele to build on. Having Monserrat College of Art nearby, as well as Gordon, Merrimack, and Endicott colleges, has been beneficial, Kalvin says, adding that the Beverly community is amazingly supportive. “We have customers who go to one coffee shop in the morning and then come to us in the afternoon.”

On a weekday, the coffee shop is filled with customers working on laptops and couples with toddlers enjoying coffee and pastries. A shelf holds bags of coffee for retail sales. On a nice day, customers sit outside having business meetings. On weekends, families with children line up for coffee and hot chocolate, toasts, and pastries. Although the hospitality industry is struggling with the scarcity of workers, Kalvin says “we’ve had the opposite,” adding that most employees have been working there since the shop opened.

As Kalvin describes the subtle flavor differences in coffees (think comforting and chocolatey or adventurous and fruity), a customer asks whether the miso caramel latte is available today. “Yes, sure is,” he replies as the customer gives him a high five on the way to order. Lattes are the favorites at Kid Dream, Kalvin says, which he thinks is a regional preference. They make all the syrups for lattes and other brews, such as miso caramel, juniper lavender, vanilla, and cardamom rose. A honey cinnamon blend often goes into iced coffees. Summer favorites are coffee sodas, espresso tonics, and espresso floats with brown sugar simple syrup and whipped cream.

Has the F&W award changed Kid Dream? Kalvin says that customers still reference the award and sometimes people from Boston or elsewhere come to try out their coffees. But, he says, “we haveno way of knowing how much” the designation meant to the fledgling business.

Daily Coffee News, an online news agency covering the coffee trade, featured Kid Dream last year. Nick Brown, its editor, says he wasn’t sure how Kid Dream came to the publication’s attention, although writers “scour through local” papers and news outlets as well as receiving suggestions from purveyors. But as to “best of” coffee designations in consumer publications, he says that the sheer volume of coffee shops and roasters nationally means there’s probably “no clear answer to who’s the best” since sampling and comparing all of them would be almost impossible.

Meanwhile, Kalvin and Abi Reynolds, who live about a half mile from the coffee shop, are serving up coffee and continuing the coffee carts at breweries and weddings. They dream of serving breakfast burritos and eventually roasting coffee in-house. They might even add another location in the future, he says. But this year is one of consolidation, he says. “Word has spread,” he says, and they’ve been surprised at their early success. But most of all, Kalvin says: “We want to be really nice, friendly, and education-focused.”

KID DREAM COFFEE COMPANY, 5 W. Dane St., Beverly, 978-560-7312.

Alison Arnett can be reached at arnett.alison@gmail.com.