Harvest Moon coffee, chocolate shop rises in Tarentum
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There’s a caffeine-fueled buzz in Tarentum, and the origin can be traced to Desiree Singleton.
After living out of state for a decade, Singleton returned to her hometown and launched her first business, Harvest Moon Coffee & Chocolates, on Corbet Street. She opened quietly Wednesday before her announced first day Thursday.
She saw a need for a business like hers in Tarentum.
“You need a place where people can come and meet for a few minutes,” she said. “It will give a sense of community and be a place where people can come to and get together.”
About 18 months passed between Singleton buying the century-old building on Corbet and the opening. Singleton and her family gutted the place, which last housed a day care.
“You definitely had to be able to see the potential,” she said. “It was just the perfect amount of space. I wanted something I could manage, and it’s on the main drag.”
She wanted the shop to have a natural look. She used recycled and “eclectic” materials.
“We’ve done a lot of the work ourselves. I wanted to be part of this from the beginning to the end,” she said. “I’ve put everything I had into this place.”
The Harvest Moon name comes from a Neil Young song Singleton said her grandmother, Jane Stobert, enjoyed.
The shop sports an awning over a garage door front, with a warm, rich environment inside accentuated by the aroma of coffee. A black walnut counter runs the length of the front behind the garage door, and employees work behind a maple counter.
“In my head, this is exactly what I saw,” she said. “It surpassed my expectations.”
Singleton, 40, is a 1997 graduate of Highlands High School. She has a degree in environmental science from Old Dominion University.
Her experience with chocolate came before coffee. Growing up in Tarentum, she worked for Nora Arensberg at her chocolate shop in Brackenridge.
That was where, through a customer, Singleton met her future husband, Anthony Singleton, a South Carolina native who works as a program manager for the Navy in Washington, D.C. They’ve been married for 15 years.
On shirts, the shop’s name is displayed as “HMC2.” While “C2” stands for “coffee & chocolate,” it is also reflective of her husband’s profession, where C-squared stands for “command and control.”
They have a son, Keller, 13, and a daughter, Lilly, 11. They lived in Virginia for two years and then Maryland for eight years. She took chocolatiering classes while being a stay-at-home mom homeschooling her kids.
Singleton and her family returned to Tarentum after her father, Bill Ringler, died in January 2017 so they could be closer to her mother, Becky Ringler.
Ringler is a silent partner in the business.
“She’s always wanted to do this since she was a teenager,” Ringler said. “Her dad would be very happy.”
Ringler, who retired from the bakery at Giant Eagle in New Kensington, admitted to not drinking coffee, but she likes the smell of it.
“I think she’ll do well,” Ringler said. “Everybody seems so excited.”
For her shop, Singleton said that, at first, she only wanted to sell chocolates. The shop opened with coffee; the chocolates are coming soon.
“I want to make something of really good quality,” she said.
Singleton’s coffee education came from working as a front desk administrator for Pittsburgh-based La Prima Espresso Co., where she spent two years at the company’s roaster on the North Side. She left that job in January before opening Harvest Moon.
All of the coffee Singleton sells — in prepared drinks and bagged — is from La Prima.
Hannah Gamble of Mt. Lebanon worked with Singleton at La Prima for about two years. She was an office assistant before taking over Singleton’s position when she left.
“She’s one of my closest friends. I’m very excited for her opening her business,” Gamble said. “I’ve been out there a couple times. It looks great inside. She did a great job setting it up. It’s beautifully designed.”
Singleton opened with six employees.
Singleton said she chose to put her shop in Tarentum to be part of the community.
“It has great potential. There’s a lot of really nice buildings down here,” she said. “I feel like this is the time and place to start something in Tarentum.”
Brian C. Rittmeyer, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University's Schreyer Honors College, has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.
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