image description — Jake's Java marks one year in Lanesborough with an eye to expansion.

Jake's Java Celebrates One Year

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
11:47AM / Friday, July 11, 2025Print Story | Email Story

Jake's Java services Jake Galliher's favorite coffee -- an iced caramel macchiato.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Jake's Java recently celebrated its one year anniversary.

"It's been really great. It's been incredibly emotional. It feels like a community hug. Being able to talk about the boys and have a legacy and memory for each and every one of them is really an amazing part of Jake's Java world here," owner Kim Krautter said.

Krautter said she wants people to see the coffeeshop as a place of love and fun. It was opened last year in honor of her son, Jacob Galliher, who lost his life during an Air Force exercise in 2023. He'd talked with his family about opening a coffeeshop — similar to the one where he met his wife, Ivy — when he got out of the service.

She opened Jake's Java in his honor last June and the day was a memorial not only the late staff sergeant but also to the seven other crewman on his Osprey, which was operating with the call sign Gundam 22.

"Jake's Java is a place of love and community and positivity. It's a place where I would like to see the growth being everyone comfortable coming here, whether it's a little one running through a sprinkler or a senior playing croquet. Jake was often pulling people together, of all dynamics around the community, and I want to continue that," Krautter said.

"I also have been venturing outside these walls a little bit and doing a little bit of catering. I've done some graduation parties with charcuterie boards providing like a continental breakfast for weddings this summer. And we have other ideas of growth too and to be continued on that part."

The coffeeshop has had some challenges during the winter season but is pulling out of it with the better weather.

"Being in hospitality in the Berkshires, as I've been for over 20 years. I know that winters can be really tough in the Berkshires for any type of hospitality," Krautter said. "We have the drive-through and the picnic tables, but we don't have indoor seating, so the winter was long, and then came May, and everything opened back up. We're seeing the tourists, we're seeing the community come back out, and a lot of familiar faces and people that are connected to Jacob coming."

During its anniversary in June, Jake's Java dedicated a bench painted by a local artist to Marine Capt. Ross Reynolds, a Leominster native.

"He was a Marine who lost his life also in an Osprey mishap in March of 22. Ross' family and I became connected through Military for Friends Foundation, and it felt fitting to celebrate Ross' life and dedicate something to him on our one year anniversary," she said.

Krautter says she wants Jake's Java to have an impact on this community by honoring Jake and other service members because it's important to always speak their names and listen to their stories.

"For me, for people to never forget my son, Staff Sgt. Jacob Galliher, there's something to be said about saying their names every day and talking about them every day, that their legacy will continue and their memories will always be here," she said. "Jacob was incredible. He was 24 years old. Accomplished a lot in his lifetime with he was an airborne linguist who spoke Mandarin. He had two children, and I quickly learned that all eight of Gundam 22 have a very similar story, and making sure that we're able to share that and talk about each one of them every day."

Among the coffeeshop's popular drinks are cold brew and auto drip. Krautter said the baristas love to have fun with the drinks.

"Our cold brew is the best. I often hear that you can't go wrong with the auto drip either with Jake's Java. When we go away, we have to bring it with us, because we're spoiled now, our baristas have a lot of fun with making different lattes and different flavored drinks," she said. "We had some Girl Scout drinks that they were doing that was a fan favorite, and Jacob's favorite was a caramel macchiato. So that is right up there as well."

Krautter also says some of their breakfast items are favorites as well, especially the pulled pork.

"Our bagels do come from a New York bakery, so they're baked in New York and delivered every morning. So I really do love our bagels. A highlight that people often come for are our apple fritters and our Cinnabons. Pulled pork is another big one. People love the pulled pork breakfast sandwich."

She hopes to expand the coffee line as well as bring Jake's Java to more communities, including "J-cups," the Jake's version of K-cups.

"I'll wait and give you the name at a later date, but it will honor all eight Gundam 22 heroes, and it's something we're hoping to get going at a large production scale and hopefully go national with it," she said. "I'm also looking into the possibility of a food truck. I would love nothing more than to have a Gundam 22 food truck that we can travel to different bases and get out into broader than Berkshire County."

Krautter would love to see Jake's grow and to educate about military sacrfice and Gundam 22's legacy, pointing how it grew the connection with Reynolds and his family.

Jake's Java is located 20 Williamstown Road with summer hours from 7 to 2 daily. Breakfast is served all day.

Tags: anniversary, coffeeshop,

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PCTV Turns 40, Anniversary Celebration This Friday

By Breanna SteeleiBekshires Staff
03:30PM / Monday, September 14, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Pittsfield Community Television is turning 40 this week, and it's celebrating with its viewers and listeners.

This Friday, Sept. 18, PCTV will celebrate at the Berkshire Hills Country Club. Ryan Peterson, WTEN News10 ABC anchor and Pittsfield High School graduate, will give the keynote address.

Executive Director Shawn Serre, who has been with the station for over 32 years, said it's their chance to celebrate all they have been able to bring to the community.

"It's a chance to reflect on everything that the organization has done over those years, all the people that have been involved. From board members to volunteers to producers to crew people to staff members, and all the different programs that we've produced," he said. "Everything from public programming to education, sports, graduations, parades, government meetings and forums, and election night coverage, and all kinds of other things that just year upon year of history that we've been able to create and document here for the Pittsfield community over those years."

Serre took over as executive director about nine years ago. Originally a volunteer fresh out of college.

The original board included former mayor Edward Reilly, Dan Dillon, Diane Morgenstern, Bernard Avalle, and John Fukes of the Berkshire Athenaeum. The operation was all-volunteer until PCTV hired the first executive director in January 1989.

PCTV has operated out of its station on Federico Drive since 1999. But originally they worked out of a basement.

"The first location that we ever had, we had all of our equipment stored in cardboard boxes in the basement of the Berkshire Athenaeum, because the Berkshire Athenaeum at the time was very gracious and allowed us to have some space while we sort of got our feet on the ground and sort of got things organized," he said. "But we had no location. We had no studio. We just had this equipment that was ordered with the money that we had from the original cable franchise grant."

"So that lasted a couple of years, and then we signed and got a lease over in our first studio location, which was over on Fourth Street in Pittsfield," Serre continued. "That was around the time that I first got involved, just before we moved to Fourth Street. So I was there in the basement of the library, opening those boxes up and seeing what we had for equipment. So we stayed there at Fourth Street for about 10 years, and then this building that we're currently in now, over on Federico Drive, was constructed in 1998. It was built kind of custom-made for the cable company and for us and for one other company."

Serre said one of their proudest moments was saving the radio station WTBR-FM back in 2018. PCTV made space for them so they could continue operation.

"We carved out some space here in our facility for that, and we've been operating that radio station ever since. So those are some of the big milestones of growth of the organization over the years, and the things that we've done," he said.

They have also invested in advanced technology to keep their programming accessible to all.

"Technologically, there's another whole series of things that we've gone through," he said. "We've started out with a single cable TV channel. We grew to three cable TV channels. We started out as standard definition on videotape, and we grew to digital, and then to high definition, and then everything went to the internet. So we're able to offer video on demand and live streams and video on social media. And then with the radio station, we also have a live stream there and podcasting. So we've seen a lot of technological change and tried to roll with that over the years."

Serre said that PCTV strives to keep people informed while also allowing space for people to create their own media.

"The whole idea behind PEG [Public Education and Government Access]...the whole idea behind that back in the 70s and 80s was that people could be left behind with the technology that's available to the big corporations," he said. "So, if you had a cable system at the time, ordinary people maybe they had camcorders at home, but they didn't have access to a TV studio; they didn't have access to the kind of technology that we had to allow them to create programs and share it with the community. So we filled that gap, and that was one of the main things that we did. And then also to be able to create programming for viewers and for the city, so that the municipal meetings can be shown, and so school committee meetings can be shown, and it really brings people in and involved."

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