The storefront is painted pink and blue, which makes Tom’s Coffee, Cards & Gifts the easiest building to describe on Binghamton’s West Side and the hardest to categorize. Inside, whole-bean coffee sold by the pound and loose tea share the floor with a jewelry case, a counter that buys gold and silver, hand-crafted pottery, gift baskets, and, from the January unveiling of each new collection through prom season, racks of formal gowns. That is not a marketing concept. It is what one independent storefront in New York’s Southern Tier has turned into since 1982.
Tom Kelleher opened the business in 1982 as a gourmet coffee and crafts shop, in a space he has described to Binghamton University’s Pipe Dream as less than a quarter of the store’s current size, and sold about 1,000 pounds of coffee that first year. In June 2025 WIVT reported the store ringing up its one millionth pound, alongside the prom dresses, cards and local handcrafted gifts that now share the floor. For the 40th anniversary in June 2022, the celebration ran to free chicken barbecue and live music, and Mayor Jared Kraham proclaimed June 11 Tom’s Coffee Cards and Gifts Day.
On the store’s own site he is just Tom, and his pitch is the local one: “When we support small businesses, we support our community.” On the prom side the site is blunter. It calls the shop “the prom and homecoming dress capital of Binghamton, NY.”
The dress registry is the part worth knowing
Every gown sold is recorded against the buyer’s high school, and no one else from that school can then buy the same dress. Kelleher described the system to WBNG when the station covered the January 2023 collection unveiling. For a school like Binghamton High, with about 1,290 students in grades 9 through 12, that is a concrete promise rather than a slogan. It is the difference between shopping here and ordering from a website that has no idea who else in Broome County clicked the same link.
At that unveiling the store had more than 700 dresses in stock in sizes 0 through 30, with special orders available through its designers for anything not on the floor. Buying for the season starts the previous May, at fashion shows around the country. Kelleher told the station the shop is “honored to be a part of that process.”
What the prom racks actually hold
The store’s own site sorts the dresses into four groups: homecoming dresses, senior prom dresses, special occasion, and unique gowns. It posts a photo gallery of the current season rather than a priced catalog, so the website tells you the shape of the selection, not whether your size in a particular style is on the rack today.
- No appointment. Walk-ins try on gowns, and help is one-on-one rather than a booked fitting slot, per the WBNG report.
- Homecoming is covered as well as spring prom, and the site treats the two as separate groups.
- Designers are not spelled out online. Call before a long drive in March and April and ask what is on the rack in your size.
One street, three towns
Main Street in front of the store is NY 17C, and 17C stays Main Street the whole way through Johnson City, Endwell and Endicott, where it runs past Union-Endicott High School. A family in Endicott or Endwell can reach the store without ever getting on the expressway. Heading the other direction, 17C bends east past Binghamton High School on Main Street, same street, same 13905 ZIP, under a mile away, and ends at Front Street. Recreation Park and its carousel are a few blocks off Main to the west.
Mall shopping in this valley means Oakdale Commons in Johnson City, the 1975 enclosed mall now partly being redeveloped into apartments and child care space. Past that, the nearest large-market alternative is Syracuse, 73 miles up I-81, about an hour and fifteen minutes each way before anyone tries on anything. A dress store you can reach on a surface street, with no appointment needed, is a different kind of errand.
The obvious caveat: this is a gift shop that also does prom, not a dedicated bridal-and-formal salon with a wall of fitting rooms. Anyone who wants a two-hour appointment with a stylist and a seamstress on staff should ask what is available before driving in. Anyone who wants to look at 700 gowns and buy coffee on the way out is in the right place.