Coffee shop Qahwah House is preparing to open at 900 W. Franklin St. (Jack Jacobs photo)
A growing coffee-shop chain is working on a new location close to VCU’s Monroe Park campus.
Qahwah House plans to open in the next 30 to 60 days at 900 W. Franklin St., franchisee Mohammed Alsaidi said last week. The cafe is taking shape in the building’s basement space that formerly housed Virginia Book Co.
It will be Qahwah’s first location in Virginia, adding to more than a dozen locations across multiple states. Alsaidi said he’s planning to open additional locations locally and elsewhere in the commonwealth.
He described Qahwah as a high-end cafe that targets a wider customer base by being open later than many coffee shops. The Qahwah in Richmond is expected to be open from 7 a.m. to midnight daily, and could adjust to later hours based on demand.
Qahwah, which is Arabic for “coffee,” tries to set itself apart by selling coffee originating from Yemen, which Alsaidi said can be a difficult place to source coffee without local connections because of the ongoing, decade-long war in the country.
“Our coffee beans are a luxury because the beans themselves are hard to get,” he said. “(Yemen) is a war-torn country and people who aren’t from there don’t have the connections we have.”
The family of Qahwah founder Ibrahim Alhasbani owns the farms that supply the company with coffee beans.
The first Qahwah opened in 2017 in Dearborn, Michigan. The company now has more than a dozen locations across multiple states and is expanding in states besides the Old Dominion. It recently opened a Columbus, Ohio, cafe and planned to open a Charlotte, North Carolina, location next week, according to news reports.
Alsaidi, who is an investor in Qahwah, splits his time between Smithfield, Virginia, and New York City. He and his brother Bakil have the franchise rights to the Qahwah brand in Virginia. They are considering Carytown and Short Pump as well as Hampton Roads for additional cafes.
In addition to coffee, Qahwah sells spiced Yemeni tea as well as pastries. The Richmond outpost plans to start to roast its own coffee shortly after it opens. Sixteen-ounce cups of coffee will sell for $5, and dine-in pots of coffee will cost $10 to $24.
Signage was up and work underway this week at the Franklin Street space. It’ll have seating for 60 people. Alsaidi declined to share the investment being made to open the local shop.
Qahwah’s space in The Chesterfield apartments building at the corner of West Franklin and Shafer streets was formerly occupied by Virginia Book Co., which relocated next door last year. Also in the building is doughnut shop Oh Mochi, which originally opened under the name Mochinut and later rebranded.
In other local coffee news, Charlottesville-based Mudhouse Specialty Coffee Roasters recently opened its long-planned cafe in Jackson Ward. Florida chain Foxtail Coffee Co. has leased a space in Short Pump.