After graduating high school in 1991, Terence Scarlatos could have gone to college.
Instead, he chose salmon. Alaskan salmon, to be precise.
He chose wrong.
At least, it might have seemed that way at the time.
Here’s what happened:
Scarlatos had been thumbing through an environmental magazine when he saw an eye-catching advertisement: “Earn $10,000 in one summer!”
All he had to do was send away for a $15 book to show him how.
He got the book, and he and a buddy decided it would be a good idea for the teenagers to cross the country.
They were going to make a ton of money in Alaska — processing salmon.
“When we finally got to Homer, Alaska, the cannery where we were supposed to work had been closed for six years,” Scarlatos recalled with a grin. “Then we looked at the back of the book, and it was 10 years old.”
Not to be deterred, the teenagers hitch-hiked north for 88 miles, to the Alaskan city of Kenai, found some salmon-processing work and had the summer of their lives.
And so started nearly a decade of crossing back and forth across the U.S. from Long Island, which also led Scarlatos to his first love: the coffeehouse.
Not one specific coffeehouse, but all of them, even the idea of them.
Scarlatos spent time in New Mexico, Utah, California, Oregon and Seattle. Along the way he’d find odd jobs, but worked mainly in restaurant kitchens. Each city had its own special coffee spot, each unique in its own way, where you could meet people, listen to music, sip coffee and figure out all the fun stuff to do — even find a job or a place to crash for the night, or a few weeks.
“Starbucks was just starting its march across the country at the time, but not yet,” he said.
The independent coffeehouses were still enjoying their time in the sun.
Over nine years of travel, Scarlatos’ wheels got to turning: He wanted to run his own coffee shop one day.
More than three decades later, he’s the founder and visionary behind the growing Toast Coffee + Kitchen restaurants on Long Island.
Planting roots
Scarlatos always had a George Bailey energy to him, an inner restlessness. A younger Scarlatos was never truly happy unless he was shaking the dust off some crummy little town.
“I became a moveomaniac,” he said.
“I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things.”.
George Bailey, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
But the years were marching on, and after some soul-searching during a three-month trip to India in his later 20s, Scarlatos had a change of perspective.
With some spiritual guidance, he realized inner peace comes from within, not without.
“India was where things kind of solidified for me, to be here now, to be in the moment,” he said.
So he committed to himself. He would plant some roots.
“And Long Island is a really cool locale,” he said. “So diverse, so many different types of people, and nooks and crannies throughout. I knew that I wanted to build Toast here, and the time was right.”
Take note: Scarlatos wasn’t some college dropout (he did take classes at Suffolk and Stony Brook between his travels) who found success the easy way. He wasn’t someone who knew somebody. Even in his travels, he was always working, saving and honing skills with an eagerness to learn from anyone willing to teach.
That all came together for him with the opening of his Toast Breakfast Lunch Café, which happened on his 29th birthday in 2002. He had finally built his West Coast-style coffeehouse in an old deli in downtown Port Jefferson.
Lines form on E. Main
The first Toast menu and logo as it appeared in 2002. (courtesy photos)
Scarlatos knew enough about the industry by this point. He was sure that no amount of coffee sales would pay the rent, and no amount of cool art on the walls and open mic nights would draw the business he needed to survive.
From the start, Toast offered breakfast and lunch dishes, such as omelets, breakfast burritos, pancakes, French toast, salads, sandwiches and wraps — as well as coffee and espresso drinks.
What he created locally has since become the now-often-duplicated hip brunch spot.
“There was a line on weekends and we weren’t built for that,” he said. “Now I had to fine tune how to make pancakes for 100 people. I had to hone my style of leadership. I had to learn how to be a boss.”
Failure was no longer an option. Because two months into the venture, Scarlatos’ now-wife, Jennifer, informed him she was expecting their first child.
“Had I found that out before opening [Toast], I might not have taken the chance,” he mused.
But the lines kept forming outside.
Not only was the food great, fresh and experimental, but Toast was “cool.” And cool is not something you can bottle and sell; it just happens organically.
“The menu was small,” Scarlatos said. “Pancakes, or chocolate chip pancakes. And then we moved to doing daily specials, and with the specials I started to see the impact I could make. I did a smoked salmon and avocado omelet, taking my West Coast flavors to New York.”
The response was tremendous, he said, “and Long Islanders aren’t shy.”
They’ll tell you what they think.
“I thought, wow, this is what people are looking for, they’re looking for something different,” he said.
But, he hit a hiccup. Scarlatos wasn’t supposed to be offering waiter service in what was zoned a retail food establishment, by Port Jeff village code. The village wasn’t pleased, saying Toast was operating as a restaurant, not a coffee shop.
Toast had to fight in court to stay open. Spoiler alert: Toast prevailed.
Expansion
Eventually, Toast was bursting at the seams in Port Jefferson.
“I just realized that people wanted something unique and interesting,” Scarlatos said. “And that carries on into today, where we’re always trying to get creative, and I involve all my kitchen staff and chefs to come up with the next month’s specials.”
Specials that might include an apple slaw chicken melt (L) or red velvet stuffed French toast (R):
In 2008, Toast expanded into the space next door.
Eventually, word of the success of what was eventually renamed Toast Coffeehouse reached Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, who would take field trips to the North Shore to dine at Toast.
Pontieri eventually convinced Scarlatos to consider opening a second spot in Patchogue.
“The mayor actually asked me to come down there,” Scarlatos said. “But I was nervous. I didn’t see the daytime strollers” like they have in Port Jeff.
Patchogue’s Toast Coffeehouse opened in January 2016, with people waiting hours to get in on weekends and weekdays alike.
In the business world, that’s proof of concept.
Scarlatos’ inner wanderlust started kicking in again.
He opened a Bay Shore Toast location in August 2018. Four years later, in 2022, the original Toast moved to a much larger location to the south, in Port Jefferson Station. Scarlatos expanded into Nassau County, in Long Beach, a year after that, in 2023.
And in the spring of 2025, what’s now been rebranded as Toast Coffee + Kitchen, will open a location in Ronkonkoma, at the new Station Yards.
A life of its own
During the initial buildup from 2016 to 2023, the state’s COVID lockdowns shut down the Toast restaurants, and no one really orders breakfast to-go.
During that time, Scarlatos took a road trip with his family in a rented RV, all the way to New Mexico.
“We went to 16 states,” he said. “I got to show my wife and kids where my inspiration came from.”
They visited that community coffeehouse outside of Santa Fe, where the idea for Toast started to germinate. That was where Scarlatos, still a teenager at the time, sipped his fist hazelnut latte, listened to the ambient sounds of Southwestern chatter mix with the hissing of steaming milk from an espresso machine. All that, and the screen door slamming, signaling another coming or going in the community.
He got a call from his staff on Long Island during that trip. The state had relaxed its COVID regulations, he was told, and the administrative team he had worked so hard to put in place had wanted to open Toast Coffeehouse at half capacity — and without him around.
Scarlatos said “do it.”
Upon returning home, Toast was already back.
“And that was the moment,” he said, “where I started to realize that it’s got its own life now.”
‘I’m gonna build things’
Scarlatos’ latest venture is The Study by Toast, which he’s opening this spring at 100 S Jersey Ave. in East Setauket.
It’s more of a traditional coffeehouse, less of a restaurant. But, he’ll be utilizing the building’s full kitchen to experiment with specials and future menu items for his growing suite of Toast Coffee + Kitchen locations.
So as Starbucks doubles down on the drive-thru, Scarlatos is doubling down on people and community.
“The Study is kind of like the original Toast idea, finally coming full circle,” he said. “Just this really cool, interesting place with books and art and music and great coffee.”
He’s also ready to see the world.
Or, better said, he’s ready to contribute his vision of Toast and its role in communities, to the world. That vision, as he wrote in a letter to himself at 28 years old, is “a place that represents the people, a safe haven from the monotony of everyday life.”
“When I dropped my RV off in Utah [after COVID restrictions loosened in 2020] and flew back home, seeing everyone coming back to life and being thankful after months of isolation, and what people had gone through, and how great it was to connect again.
“That, for me, was where I realized I wanted to share this with the world, you know, if I can. I can take a shot at bringing this national. Because I still have a lot of energy left, and I still have strong beliefs in this being a successful brand that could be experienced by everyone.”
