That seems ambitious enough, but the two MilkBoy owners are also plunging head-first into the world of movies, teaming with a locally based Oscar winner to coproduce a romantic comedy.
"There's a little bit of a feeling if we're not moving forward we'll die, like a shark or something that has to keep swimming," Joyner, 41, said. "Maybe it's just that there's so many cool things to do and we want to do them."
The pair certainly made news in 2011 - most of it welcome, some not so much. For instance, they were in a running battle with the carpenters' union, which picketed the Ardmore coffeehouse for months after a contractor rebuilding MilkBoy's space at 11th and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia employed nonunion workers.
But Lokoff and Joyner see the two new ventures not only as too-good-to-pass-up opportunities, but also as ways to reconnect with their urban roots from the early 1990s, when the two musicians first paired up at a studio in North Philadelphia.
"We started in the city and now we're coming back," Lokoff, 46, said. "I think it's where it should be."
The move is a reversal of their odyssey into the western suburbs in 2001, when the lease expired on their studio above Zapf's Music in North Philadelphia and they moved to Ardmore to tap into advertising and other commercial forms of recording. Four years later, they opened their coffee emporium to showcase the bands they worked with at the studio.
But a decade later, Joyner and Lokoff say getting talent to come to the Main Line has become more difficult.
"In some ways, we maxed ourselves out at the Ardmore studio," Lokoff said. "We couldn't get more commercial work. Businesses don't want to leave the city. Bands don't want to leave the city."
