Adding to the explosion of high-end specialty shops in TriBeCa is an upscale coffee shop from Philadelphia, La Colombe.

“All kinds of specialty foods and beverages have had big growth over the past five years,” the chairman of retail leasing at Prudential Douglas Elliman, Faith Hope Consolo, said. “The key for success will be to provide quick, easy, simple service.”

That’s exactly what La Colombe (French for the dove) does: It offers only five blends of coffee by the pound and serves only the basics, coffee and espresso, hot or iced, with no frills or syrups. Its minimalist stores — the one in New York has just a wooden bench around the edge and small wood tables and chairs — offer little food, such as croissants and select pastries from the Petrossian bakery. La Colombe has been in business since 1994 and has two stores in Philadelphia, one in Center City and the other in a well-to-do suburb, Manayunk. The New York outlet is on Church Street, a busy street that benefits from crosstown traffic and tourists from nearby Chinatown.

Although La Colombe has had a wholesale business in New York for about 10 years, it has taken the owners quite a while to find the perfect place to open a café. There has been no advertising nor marketing for the new store.

“Our main goal is to sell to restaurants and cafes,” one of the six partners of La Colombe and its director of sales, Nicolas O’Connell, said. “What we have to do here is to showcase what we do — show how we work with espresso and cappuccinos. We don’t do advertising or promotion. It’s all about the coffee.”

While it may seem atypical not to advertise or market a new business, most niche retailers do not advertise. Instead, they rely on the neighborhood’s traffic and built-in customers and residents to build a following and increase brand awareness. “We wanted to open in a still month and have neighbors discover us step by step, so it’s been a discreet opening,” Mr. O’Connell said.

Ms. Consolo said TriBeCa is the right place for such a store as La Colombe. “They are filling a blank,” Ms. Consolo said. “There hasn’t been a retail of that ilk for about five years in the area.”

The price of retail and commercial rental space in TriBeCa is relatively low compared with most other parts of Manhattan. Ms. Consolo said the neighborhood demands about $150 a square foot for retail space.

While La Colombe may be serving coffee downtown, much of its wholesale business takes place uptown at upscale spots such as Daniel and the Jean Georges restaurants and with famous chefs such as Alain Ducasse and Tom Colicchio of the Craft restaurants. La Colombe has a base of about 100 customers in Manhattan that also includes Bergdorf Goodman and the Pierre Hotel. The company stays away from distributing to fine food markets, or places such as Whole Foods. “We don’t sell to stores in New York because we like to control the freshness of the coffee,” Mr. O’ Connell said. “With them, you don’t know where your coffee is going to end up.”

The coffee company’s first star chef customer was George Perrier of Le Bec Fin, the premier restaurant of Philadelphia. Mr. Perrier helped launch La Colombe to success.

If the majority of the names associated with La Colombe sound French, it is no accident. Although the owner and principle founder of the company, Todd Carmichael, is not French, he does speak the language. His partner, Jean-Philippe Ibeti, the roast master, is French, as is Mr. O’Connell, despite his Irish-sounding last name.

Many cafes in Brooklyn that have sprouted up during the borough’s boom have picked up the brand as well. Café Regular in Park Slope serves only La Colombe coffee. “It’s better than anything else — Illy, Lavazza — at the moment,” the owner of the café, Martin O’Connell (no relation to the other Mr. O’Connell), said. “The service they provide is also much better — we get the same services as Jean Georges and Ducasse. They also help train staff in order to serve the same product.”

La Colombe also has a very specific way of blending the milk with its espresso. In addition, it makes sure to have the finest equipment to craft its coffees and checks that its customers use up-to-par coffee equipment as well. “We are strict about the way we sell,” Mr. O’Connell said. “It’s always in person, we always do a taste testing, and we make sure they have the right machines.” With the espresso machines La Colombe uses in its New York shop, Mr. O’Connell says the espresso comes out like “liquid gold.”

Americans drink about 1.9 cups of coffee a day, according to the National Coffee Association. For this sizable market, La Colombe is pouring out quite a small portion of it.