He created a blogger network, but wanted more connection. He found it in coffee and comedy.

Walk into Sports Drink on a weekday morning, and you’ve found a cute, quirky coffee shop. Remote workers peck at their laptops over coffee and sandwiches. They sit at small tables — each adorned with a potted plant — or relax in the cushioned stadium-seating section that pushes up against an exposed brick wall.

Come in on a weekend night, though, and you’re in one of the city’s fastest growing comedy clubs — in fact, one that was recently voted Gambit’s “Best Place to See Comedy.” New Orleanians pack into those same seats to watch a lineup of comedians that include both budding locals developing their material and national acts with HBO specials.

The stage is small but memorable — a wall of stacked orange water coolers that has become Sports Drink’s calling card.

The gatherings don’t end with shared workspaces and comedy. On weekend mornings friends chat, and on other evenings you’ll find anything from trivia to karaoke to Pelicans watch parties to community nights.

“To me, owning a local business means building a community,” said Andrew Stephens, who opened the shop, at 1042 Toledano St. in the Irish Channel, in April 2023. “I want people to enjoy being here, and to know they’re going to see friendly faces when they come through our doors.”

Working from home, sometimes

Sports Drink was what Emma Dendy needed when she moved to New Orleans in June of last year. As someone who works from home, Dendy was nervous about moving to a new city with no family or friends.

One Sunday morning, she wanted to see if there was a place where she could watch a Formula 1 race with other fans. A Reddit search led her to Sports Drink.

“They made me feel so welcome that I started going there multiple times per week,” she said. Today, Dendy leads the F1 group, which meets at Sports Drink for every race.

“It’s really nice to have a place you can walk into and know you’ll receive a warm welcome from friends,” she added. “It’s like my very own ‘Cheers.’”

Meanwhile, the comedy club is gaining steam. A drinks menu offers fun frozen (and regular) cocktails, plus wine and beer. In addition to its thumbs-up from Gambit, it has attracted praise from touring comedians.

“This is the kind of comedy club we need more of,” said Ian Karmel, who was the co-head writer for “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and has written for the Grammy Awards. He performed at Sports Drink in March.

“It’s intimate, which means the laughs are right on top of you — something comedians love,” Karmel said, “but most importantly Andrew cares so much about building a comedy scene here. He’s not just trying to make a quick buck. He’s flying in top acts, and when someone does that over and over again, your audience trusts you. That’s how you build a local comedy community.”

A winding path

Stephens, 31, took a winding path to owning a coffee shop and comedy club in New Orleans.

He is a Baton Rouge native who studied journalism and sports management at the University of Georgia. Looking for a way to combine what he was learning with his interests, he began writing a sports blog as a junior in 2015.

“It was going well, so then I found some friends and some friends-of-friends to help blog more sports content at UGA,” he said. “And then that was going well, too, so we found some friends and some friends-of-friends at colleges around the entire SEC to join us.”

“Soon we had 100 folks writing and editing, mostly about college football,” Stephens said. “None of us were making money, but we were gaining some steam.”

In 2017, seeing an opportunity, he turned his regional group of bloggers into a national network of podcasters called Armchair Media. Across approximately 40 shows, the network was able to attract an average of 200,000 listeners.

That, in turn, attracted interest from a sales company. They purchased a minority stake in Armchair Media — which Stephens renamed “Sports Drink” — and helped to grow it during the pandemic.

“The pandemic was a tough time for lots of people, but a great period of growth for podcasting because everyone was cooped up in their home with free time,” he said. “But I didn’t know if that growth would last.”

Something else also gave him pause. “As the company grew, my job had less and less to do with sports and more and more to do with attracting sponsorship dollars from lululemon,” he said. “I didn’t enjoy that as much.”

A new Sports Drink

Stephens moved to New Orleans in April 2022. The Pelicans were building toward a playoff run, and fans gathered on social media after each game to discuss what they had watched. The group, Stephens said, was organic and friendly and reminded him of what he loved about sports.

“I realized that up until now ‘working in sports’ either meant being a journalist, which ruined being a fan for me,” he said, “or it meant being an ad salesman, which felt like I wasn’t even working in sports.”

“I wanted to be in the community itself,” he said, “not sending emails from a dark room in my house. I wanted to talk, in a real space, to people who liked the same things I liked.”

At a crossroads in 2023, Stephens pivoted Sports Drink from a podcasting network to a brick and mortar storefront on Toledano Street just a few doors from the Magazine Street corridor. At first, it shared the space with Junk Drawer Coffee, operated during the day by Stephens’ friend, David Privat-Gilman. At night, the business became Sports Drink Comedy Club.

There was plenty of overlap, and more than a little confusion.

“I’ll concede that two separate businesses creating some sort of ‘Coffee Comedy Club’ might not have been super clear,” Stephens said.

After a year together, the two companies decided it would be smarter to part ways. Junk Drawer Coffee is heading to Broadway, near Tulane University, while Sports Drink has taken over the coffee and food at Toledano Street. (They’ll be proudly selling Junk Drawer Coffee, Stephens confirmed.)

At the same time, Stephens is ramping up Sports Drink after dark. That will include four nights of comedy each week beginning in 2025, he said.

A brief acting career?

Customers say a big reason Sports Drink works is because of Stephens’ welcoming and cheerful personality. You’ll often find him at the counter, greeting patrons. At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, he’s hard to miss.

He’s so tall that as he was preparing to open Sports Drink, he jokingly responded to a casting call for “Winning Time,” HBO’s series about the Lakers’ basketball dynasty.

“I sent in a goofy tape saying I could spin a basketball on my finger and that I acted in my third-grade play,” Stephens said.

He got the part.

Outside of Sports Drink (and his brief acting career), Stephens can be found at Pelicans games where he has season tickets, playing basketball on his “one-time champion” JCC team, or hanging out at home with his wife, Amelia, and their two rescue dogs, a Jack Russell terrier mix and a beagle mix named, respectively, Frank and Beans.

Building community

Stephens is working hard to bring new audiences to his comedy shows, giving away tickets to New Orleanians who haven’t been to a show at Sports Drink yet. 

Besides comedy and the Formula 1 club, groups gather for community nights where they might make sandwiches for community kitchens or watch Pelicans games. A few times a year, they charter a bus to a Pelicans home game and host pick-up basketball on court afterward.

One of Stephens’ favorite events is a Wednesday night “Tropical Trivia.” The weekly session has brought in a new crowd, many who arrive alone without a team.

“The first night it happened, our regulars invited the new people onto their teams, and that’s become a tradition ever since,” Stephens said. “It’s really nice to see, because I think it shows our community isn’t only dependent on one person. It’s in our DNA.”

Those connections have started to spread outside Sports Drink. Recently, Stephens saw two of his customers grabbing lunch together on Magazine Street.

He said hello and, as they talked, he realized they had met at Sports Drink.

“And now they’re just out here in the world hanging out, and it warms my heart,” he said. “That something I built is bringing people together — it’s been a long road, but that’s always been the goal.”