A top Raleigh coffee shop will expand into North Hills with a new cafe and roastery
One of the most popular coffee shops in the Triangle is set to add a new cafe.
Jubala Coffee, with locations in North Raleigh and on Hillsborough Street in downtown Raleigh, will open a third coffee shop in Raleigh’s North Hills. The new cafe is projected to open in 2021.
Beyond coffee, the new Jubala will launch a pastry program and serve a larger food menu compared to the other locations. The new shop will have seating for 65 and offer weekend brunch when it gets up and running.
“North Hills is a connector and leader in our city, and we can’t think of a more perfect place to expand than North Hills’ Park Central alongside other local friends like Arrow, Happy + Hale, and Vita Vite,” said Andrew Cash, owner of Jubala Coffee, in a release. “We are excited to share a new coffee experience with North Hills’ visitors and to have the North Hills community join us as we create the Jubala our team always envisioned — one that is fully engaged with the supply chain, celebrating our success with the most vital participant, the farmer.”
Since it opened its first shop in 2011 in North Raleigh’s Lafayette Village, Jubala has been serving up high quality cups of coffee and espresso drinks. Its second location opened on Hillsborough Street near N.C. State’s campus in 2016. The company added a sister shop in the Transfer Company Food Hall, partnering with Raleigh bakery Boulted Bread to launch wood-fired bagel shop Benchwarmers Bagels.
The most significant difference for the third Jubala shop is the addition of coffee roasting. At the other locations, Jubala brewed a wide range of coffees from Durham roaster Counter Culture, even offering free espresso on Fridays for customers to try different varieties. The North Hills Jubala will start roasting coffee beans for the cafe.
Cash said he first became enamored with coffee through coffee farmers during a 2001 trip to Kenya. Adding a roaster is a goal 20 years in the making, he said.
“While 2020 has been a year of pivots, 2021 will be a year of growth,” Jubala said Tuesday morning on Instagram. “While our journey to this point has spanned a couple decades, we believe that we are only getting started in creating the company that we have always imagined. A company fully engaged with the supply chain, celebrating our success with the most vital participant, the farmer.”
Don’t worry, free espresso Friday isn’t going anywhere.
“One hundred percent, we’ll still have free espresso Friday,” Cash said.
When Jubala North Hills opens next year, Cash said the shop’s roastery will supply it and the two other shops with most of the coffee served in the cafe. The goal he said, is to serve around 70 percent of their proprietary roasts, plus Counter Culture and other specialty roasters.
One of the drivers of getting into roasting, Cash said, was employees reaching an employment ceiling at Jubala and leaving for roaster or other parts of the coffee business.
“There’s an end game with employees, they become manager and then we have nothing else for them,” Cash said in a phone interview. “This is about having an impact on the (coffee) farmer and creating growth and opportunity in the company.”
Cash said the company has around 43 employees between the two shops and will add cafe employees and a four-person roasting team with the new location.
North Hills has seen some turnover in its restaurant tenants since the pandemic, losing Peruvian chicken spot Viva Chicken, Pharoah’s and B. Good. But it’s also added a prominent North Carolina barbecue restaurant, The BBQ Lab, a franchised version of the Redneck BBQ Lab in Johnston County.
“A specialty coffee shop has been on our wish list for a long time, so we are thrilled to welcome Jubala to North Hills,” said John Kane, CEO of Kane Realty Corporation. “Jubala’s commitment to its local community, its focus on the customer experience and the quality of its product make it the perfect fit for North Hills’ Park District.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 11:23 AM.
