Joyride: LEV BRIE

The Joyride enterprise has hit the mark by combining the three things that almost every New Yorker regularly seeks: caffeine, convenience, and guilt-free sweets. Lev Brie, the founder of Joyride, first brought these essentials to the streets via foodtruck, offering highly delicious Stumptown Coffee, organic frozen yogurt,  and...drumroll, please... the world's first caffeinated fro-yo, "Buzzed" (genius, no?). The truck also offers other innovative menu options, such as the “Jeffrey Paul,”  a decadent coffee and espresso combo made with Stumptown's Hairbender roast and Mariebelle chocolate. Joyride has some of the friendliest staff of any food truck we’ve ever seen, and it is thoroughly “green” by diesel truck standards, using the “quietest, most efficient generator on the market,” as well as ice coffee cups that are bio-degradable and made of corn. Raised in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Lev has moved around quite a bit, and is a man of academics and business--he studied undergrad at Stanford and Columbia, earned a Masters in France at 'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and started a PhD at the University of Chicago. After dabbling in tutoring and web design, Lev is now an owner of Endeavor Tutoring and Test Preparation, in addition to Joyride Trucks and its successful spinoff venture, Joyride Coffee Distributors. Joyride Coffee Distributors is the official supplier of Stumptown Coffee and is the first company to provide “third wave” coffee delivery at almost any location in NYC.

So, if walking to the truck at its daily locations to get your Buzz on is too strenuous, call 917.670.3314 to get Stumptown delivered to your office or next event. And don’t forget to nominate the Joyride truck for the Vendy Awards on streetvendor.org!

 

YouRenew: JOEY PAPPALARDO

Joey Pappalardo is the Director of Business Development for YouRenew.com, an internet-based company that provides "the easiest, fastest and greenest way to turn your old electronic devices into cash." YouRenew is a platform for purchasing and selling old electronics from cell phones, laptops and cameras, to gaming devices, calculators, and DVDs--a tech-junkie and environmentalist's dream in one web address. Joey graduated from Yale University in 2008,  and although he just recently moved from NYC (and a job on Wall Street) back to New Haven, Connecticut, to work in the YouRenew office, we couldn't resist featuring him. Joey is the image of a socially-responsible member of the internet generation, and unarguably one of the nicest people around. As e-commerce becomes a staple of the marketplace, keep your eye on the movements of ReCommerce (e-commerce's environmentally-friendly cousin), so that you can get the most value out of everything you buy and cut down on the amount of waste going into our landfills.

We present to you the thoughts of Joey Pappalardo, living green and in high-voltage.