One idea. One city.
Eleven years of not stopping.
I didn't come from business. I came from restaurants — the kind of work where you're on your feet until 2am and the whole operation falls apart if one person doesn't show up. I still do it. It keeps the lights on while I build something I actually believe in.
In 2015, I was sitting in my Brooklyn apartment with a pile of used coffee grounds and a habit of looking things up I probably shouldn't. I came across an article about coffee being used in skincare. And then a thought hit me that I couldn't shake: why isn't anyone using the grounds after the brew?
That was it. That was the whole idea.
What I didn't know
could fill a book.
I had no business background. No roadmap. No mentor pulling me aside to explain how any of this worked. I just had an idea I thought was so obviously good that the world would figure it out on its own.
It didn't work that way.
What followed was a decade of trials, mistakes, small wins, long silences, and the kind of roller coaster that makes you question everything — except the idea itself. Somewhere in that mess I found the one thing that actually matters: it doesn't matter how long it takes, as long as you don't stop.
"It doesn't matter how long it takes,
as long as you don't stop."
This isn't just soap.
2nd Ground exists because of a simple belief — that waste is just a resource in the wrong place. Every bar starts with spent espresso grounds rescued from Cafe Grumpy in Brooklyn. Grounds that would have gone to landfill become something that actually works on your skin. That's not a marketing angle. That's the whole point.
The goal was never just to make a good product. It was to prove that a circular economy — where nothing gets wasted and everything gets a second life — is possible at any scale. Even one bar at a time.
Still brewing.
2nd Ground is still a solo operation, still handcrafted in Brooklyn, still sourcing from local cafés. Every bar that ships is made by hand. That's not going to change.
What is changing — slowly, stubbornly — is the scale of the idea. If you're here, you're part of that.