Nicole Poko knows everyone has a story. This is hers.
When Poko moved to High Bridge in 2015, the former “city girl” from Old Bridge found herself starving for community and meeting people in her new, more rural home. The following year, she noticed that a café on Main Street was closing and decided to take a leap. She bought the equipment and signed a lease, launching Scout’s Coffee Bar + Mercantile, which became more than a place for great coffee.
It became a galvanizing force in the community.
Poko, an artist who had never owned a hospitality business, set about designing a space with its own unique character. “I wanted to provide a comfortable place for neighbors to meet and connect over coffee and to slow down and be in the moment,” she says.
To take this concept to the next level, in 2019, she partnered with actress Kaitlin Overton of No Dominion Theatre Co. to create a community-building event similar to “The Moth” where people connect through the art of shared storytelling.
And in doing so, Poko launched a local movement that put High Bridge on the map as a storytelling destination. In 2024, the Scout’s Story Slam was the subject of the PBS documentary “Here’s The Story: The Tellers of High Bridge.”
Today, the Story Slams, which occur on the fourth Friday of every month, are run by Gina Sampaio, the executive director of Red Mill Museum Village in Clinton, and Will Reisen, an electric combination who Poko says “have a really great balance together.” The structure and rules are simple: Every month has a theme. People who are interested in participating sign their name on a clipboard. They tell stories that are their own, take no longer than five minutes and are true to the best of their memory.
“The stories can be loosely based on the theme,” Poko says. “And we need audience members as much as storytellers. We have people who have come to Story Slam for years and have never told a story, then maybe one day they come up and they tell one story, and they never tell a story again. People listen to the stories, get the vibe and sometimes change their mind throughout the show and put their name on the list if they realize they have a story to tell.”
When people arrive, they find slips of paper on their seat with a warm-up prompt—“one question, like tell us about your first dance,” Poko says—that is submitted anonymously and kicks off the night with funny or heartfelt stories. “People become more vulnerable up front and it also jogs their memories.”
Such is the environment that Poko has curated at Scout’s: one of comfort, companionship and inclusion. “We welcome guests to our café in the same way we welcome people into our homes,” she says. “And I think it’s because of that attitude and mentality that we’ve always had a more comfortable space, one where people feel at home.”
On the other days, Scout’s buzzes with community, connections and conversation over great in-house roasted specialty coffee and a bakery serving treats led by Molly Whitehead, a graduate from Johnson & Wales, who uses recipes developed by Poko.
“We care a lot about quality—where we source our coffee beans and how we roast them—and have an intensive training program for our baristas,” Poko says. “The specialty coffee we serve is in the top 10 percent of the coffee grown.”
Poko credits the people of High Bridge and the surrounding community who make this area such a special place to live and manage a business. “Community love. There is no place like High Bridge,” she says. “You can make a positive impact on people around you so easily here and bring neighbors even closer.”
Learn more at scoutscoffeebar.com.