Columbia Pike Deli is officially open for business.

The new delicatessen at 2406 Columbia Pike celebrated its grand opening last week, taking over the space previously occupied by Rappahannock Coffee. The coffee shop, a fixture for two decades, closed last year when its owner decided to retire.

The deli’s new owner, Jose Lopez, brings years of experience to the table. After arriving from Honduras in 1999, Lopez spent 16 years at a Maryland deli before co-founding the Honduran restaurant El Catrachito in Olney, along with several other locations, with his sister.

Lopez, who left his original deli job in 2016, said he missed the deli atmosphere and crafting sandwiches.

“This is my passion,” the Maryland resident said. “This is what I like to do.”

When asked what his favorite sandwiches are, Lopez said the Reuben, California BLT, and chipotle chicken.

Outside of a fresh coat of paint and new flooring, the space is relatively the same.

The deli operates Monday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and weekends until 8 p.m., with plans to potentially open earlier for breakfast pending the replacement of a broken espresso machine.

“When I came here to see the place, I thought this espresso machine was working, and my idea was to open at 7 a.m.,” Lopez said. But since the machine is broken, I have to buy a new one.”

The new deli will join several other restaurants that have opened within a half-mile stretch of Columbia Pike over the last year, including Mpanadas, Honduran and Salvadoran restaurant Variedades Catrachas, the well-reviewed Spanish tapas spot Sabores, and Japanese eatery Ryu Izakaya.

A couple of new restaurants are also set to open nearby. Among them are Cornerstone, taking over the space formerly home to Rebellion on the Pike, and 2910 Kitchen & Bar, which is currently expected to open later this month after several delays.

Roggenart Bistro & Café is now open in Ballston.

Located at 4401 Wilson Blvd, formerly the home of Republik Coffee Bar, the Maryland-based coffee shop launched with a soft opening two Saturdays ago. It is now gearing up for its grand opening on Thursday, April 4, according to store manager Nadia Id Lachguer.

Since its opening, the European-inspired café has attracted a steady stream of residents and office workers, Id Lachguer told ARLnow. Several patrons were enjoying coffee and baked goods inside when ARLnow visited on Monday morning.

“Business has been good,” she said

ARLnow learned about the new coffee shop’s arrival in Arlington in October. The Ballston location marks the fifth in the D.C. area and the first in Virginia for Roggenart, which was founded in 2017.

In addition to coffee, the café offers a variety of European-style pastries, including croissants, Danishes, and tarts, along with a selection of scratch-made sandwiches and soups. There is also a specialty pastry dubbed the “crookie,” a fusion between a croissant and cookie, which Id Lachguer says is all the rage now in France.

“The crookie took over Paris,” she said.

The Ballston outpost offers an all-day breakfast and lunch menu, including a range of sandwiches and baked goods. Following the grand opening, the café also plans to introduce a selection of soups.

Roggenart joins a growing list of coffee options in the Ballston area, including Korean coffee purveyor Gute Leute, the outdoor stand Ballstonian, and Slipstream, near the intersection of Wilson Blvd and Glebe Road, as well as Compass Coffee and national chain locations.

Colada Shop is set to open its first Arlington location on Monday, and the first 100 visitors will receive a free “Colada Clarendon” tote bag.

The Sterling-based Cuban cafe is moving into a 2,200-square-foot space next to Tatte and Seamore’s, at 2811 Clarendon Blvd.

The company originally announced the Clarendon opening last August. This will be the sixth Colada Shop to open in the D.C. area, including one that opened in the Mosaic District in 2021. The first location opened in Sterling in 2016 before quickly expanding to D.C.

“We’ve been blown away by the love and support from the Washington, D.C. community,” Founder and CEO Daniella Senior said in a press release. “Each Colada Shop has its own unique charm, and I’m thrilled to see the infectious energy this Clarendon spot will bring to our family. Clarendon has always been on our radar, and now, we’ve found the perfect spot to bring our Cuban coffee, cocktails, and culinary delights, amplifying the neighborhood’s spirit.”

ARLnow reported in December that a second Colada Shop is slated to open in Crystal City this year, along with a Tatte cafe and Van Leeuwen ice cream shop, among other businesses.

What sets the Clarendon location apart from its sister cafes is a bigger bar, which will be the largest among all its locations.

“Prepare to be dazzled by the spacious interior and cozy patio seating at the Clarendon store, but the real star is the bar — meticulously designed to foster a lively ambiance where guests can unwind, mingle, and indulge in an array of tantalizing Cuban-inspired libations,” the release said.

The restaurant will offer a menu that includes favorites like Cuban-style empanadas, croquetas, arroz con pollo and BBQ ribs, with vegetarian options including jackfruit dishes.

The cocktail menu offers a variety of rum-based drinks, including the traditional piña colada and mojito, among others. For patrons on the go, the shop will offer seasonal slushies and cocktail pouches.

The building housing Colada Shop dates back to 1941 and is part of The Crossing Clarendon development, which has been renovated and rebranded in recent years.

The restaurant joins other new openings in Clarendon including as Chip City. There have also been several closures in the area, including clothier Jos. A Bank, outdoor outfitter Orvis, bar/restaurant Chicken + Whiskey, Mediterranean restaurant Cava Mezze and international bakery Le Pain Quotidien.

More changes could be on the horizon at The Crossing in the coming months as the property manager aims to “modernize” its retail offerings.

The old Harris Teeter in Ballston is set to close next month but shoppers won’t need to wait long to use the new location across the street.

Harris Teeter has posted signs around its old and new location announcing that its 600 N. Glebe Road location will close on Tuesday, April 2 at 2 p.m., with the new store at 624 N. Glebe Road opening at 9 a.m. the next day.

A Starbucks kiosk inside is also being built and will open on the same day as the grocery store, according to a spokesperson for Harris Teeter. The spokesperson noted there will be a free sampling event the day before the official grand opening.

Starbucks also confirmed the opening in a statement to ARLnow.

“Starbucks is always looking for great locations to better meet the needs of our customers, and we are happy to confirm that we will be opening a new location at 624 N. Glebe Road in Arlington, VA in the spring of 2024,” a Starbucks spokesperson write. “This new Starbucks location is licensed and operated by Harris Teeter licensee.”

That will put the coffee chain in more direct competition with homegrown Good Company Doughnuts & Cafe on the western side of Glebe Road. Starbucks will also compete with itself — its location at 4000 Wilson Blvd, which opened less than a year ago, is about 2-3 blocks away.

ARLnow reported last month that the Georgia-based developer, Southeastern Real Estate Group, LLC, started leasing the 310 apartment units above the new store last fall and was close to completing the first phase of its three-phase development. Construction on the apartments, dubbed URBA, began in 2020.

The first phase was initially slated to finish last fall, with the second phase expected to start in the summer of 2024. Southeastern and Harris Teeter have not given a timeline for the start of phase two.

After the new Harris Teeter opens and the old site is demolished, the remaining 733 planned apartments will be built.

The second phase includes 197 apartments and a 0.6-acre public park on the existing Harris Teeter site. The third phase will add another 226 apartments and more than 10,000 square feet of retail space, for a total of 77,575 square feet of retail across the development.

The development also includes underground parking with 942 spaces and the extension of N. Tazewell and N. Randolph streets.

For Five Coffee Roasters’ Rosslyn location was already bustling with activity just hours after opening its doors for the first time on Friday.

“I’m so excited!” customer Laura Durie exclaimed to a companion as she looked at the coffee shop’s menu. “Look, they have an omelet!”

Durie has been walking past the 1735 N. Lynn Street location every day for work, eagerly awaiting its opening. But she didn’t know the spacious, two-story café sold food until she walked in.

“We have a lot of coffee shops, but this is just gorgeous,” she told ARLnow as she waited for her drip coffee.

The café, which replaces the Chopt that occupied the location after a Starbucks closed in early 2021, sells pastries, stuffed cookies and breakfast and lunch items in addition to coffee. Additionally, unlike other For Five locations, it will transform on the weekends into a bar with beer, wine and cocktails.

Dusan Sokica, director of operations at For Five, said customers were waiting outside the coffee shop when it opened at 7 a.m. on Friday. He was doing the payroll at another location when the business’s owner called him that morning.

“’Where are you?’” he recalled the owner asking him. “’Why are you not here? The line is out of the door, man!’”

By around 10 a.m., customers had begun to occupy many of the booths in the coffee shop’s upper floor. Sokica expects even bigger crowds on other days of the week, when more people go to work in person.

“This was supposed to be, today, a little, soft opening, but it seems more like it’s a grand opening,” the operations director said.

At 4,316 square feet, the Rosslyn café is the biggest location yet for the New York City-based coffee company. Initially predicted to open in early 2022, the business is about a mile from For Five’s Courthouse location, which opened in 2020.

Asked for his coffee recommendations, Sokica encouraged customers to try the shop’s signature blend. Also popular are the freddo cappuccino and freddo espresso — nods to the founders’ Greek heritage that Sokica thinks will be especially in demand in the spring and summer.

Meanwhile, Durie, who grew up in Texas, is excited to try a dish that reminds her of home.

“I’m definitely going to be back and I’m definitely going to get the huevos rancheros,” she said.

After a nearly five-month wait, Maryland-based Roggenart Bistro & Café is set to open in Ballston later this month.

Located inside the former Republik Coffee Bar at 4401 Wilson Blvd, the European-inspired coffee shop and bakery chain is planning to hold a soft opening at the end of February, aiming for a grand opening by mid-March.

“Grand openings are always dangerous,” Roggenart owner and Serbian-born businessman Nemanja Popov told ARLnow. “We’re still a small company and we are probably going to do a grand opening, maybe two or three weeks after our soft opening.”

Once open, this will be the fifth Roggenart in the D.C. area and first outside of Maryland. The coffee shop opened its first location in 2017.

In addition to coffee, the café offers a variety of European-style pastries, including croissants, danishes and tarts, along with a selection of scratch-made sandwiches and soups.

“We have things like ham and cheese croissant, pepperoni mozzarella croissant, mushroom medley rolls… various assortments of quiches… cupcakes, cookies, regular muffins, so the entire bake portfolio,” Popov said, adding he recently added a few vegan options.

After undergoing some light renovations, the shop’s interior will also sport a different look than before, Popov says.

“We think we made it more beautiful and cozy,” he said.

Upon opening, Popov noted there will be special offerings for customers, though he is still deciding what those will be.

“It’s going to be very exciting, and we hope that we are going to have a lot of European baking connoisseurs,” he said.

Roggenart joins a growing list of coffee options in the Ballston area, including Korean coffee purveyor Gute Leute, the outdoor stand Ballstonian, and Slipstream, near the intersection of Wilson Blvd and Glebe Road, as well as Compass Coffee and national chain locations.

The Rosslyn location of For Five Coffee Roasters is set to open in the next three weeks — and it will serve more than coffee and pastries.

The café at 1735 N. Lynn Street will be the company’s first to offer a bar with wine, beer and liquor, “making it the perfect after work destination or residential happy hour spot,” Vice President of Marketing Tracy Imhof said.

The Rosslyn location of the New York City-based coffee company will be the biggest one yet at 4,316 square feet. Initially predicted to open this time in 2022, the new location next to Chopt will fill a gap in cafés on the block left by the closures of Cosi and Starbucks.

For Five Coffee Roasters in Rosslyn will boast a full coffee menu, artisanal pastries, stuffed cookies and made-to-order breakfast and lunch items with a “For Five twist,” Imhof said.

The company was founded in 2010 in Queens, New York, and has since branched out to Chicago, Los Angeles, D.C. and Northern Virginia. For Five’s Rosslyn shop is about a mile from its Courthouse location, which opened in 2020.

According to its website, the company has direct connections with small coffee farms “renowned for their top-tier crops.” For Five provides signature blends and single origin coffees sourced from 30 different regions around the world.

“For Five’s coffee philosophy is firmly rooted in the essence of the coffee bean,” the website says. “It’s not the familiar brown bean we recognize, but the vibrant green bean plucked fresh from coffee trees that truly reveals coffee’s quality.”

A Korea-based coffee chain quietly opened its first permanent U.S. outpost in the Ballston neighborhood last month, drawing long lines and rave reviews.

Gute Leute Coffee Bar, located at 800 N. Glebe Road next to Mussel Bar & Grille, held its soft opening on Saturday, Dec. 23.

Although Gute Leute translates to “good people” in German, the coffee chain was conceived in Seoul, South Korea.

The cafe’s menu offers a variety of teas and coffee drinks, including espressos and lattes. A unique highlight is a weekend-only, three-course tasting event, available only with a reservation.

Dubbed the “Omakase” coffee experience, which translates to ‘I leave it up to you’ in Japanese, customers who book online can savor a variety of seasonal espresso drinks, including the Pine Cone, served in a sour sugar-rimmed glass, the Granita with lemon sorbet, and the Gute Leute, a blend of cream and cookies over a butterscotch base.

Sang Moon, a Fairfax resident and co-owner of Gute Leute, told ARLnow he was one of the original investors of the coffee chain back when it first opened in Seoul in 2021. Five Gute Leute stores are currently operating in Seoul, according to Sang.

After working with company’s corporate headquarters for years, Sang said he approached the CEO about bringing the concept to the U.S.

“It was a little bit unique,” he said. “We have nothing similar here.”

At the behest of the company’s CEO, Sang and his business partner, Sean Moon, conducted multiple market tests — pop-up cafes — in New York City last year.

“It was very successful,” Sang said.

Having successfully demonstrated the viability of the concept in the U.S. market, Sang was given the green light by the Gute Leute CEO to open his own franchise in Arlington.

It appears to have been a good decision so far: over the weekend the cafe’s Instagram account warned of 20-45 minute waits for coffee due to a “surge of customers.” That’s despite opening with little fanfare during the holidays, on the “quiet” western side of Glebe Road, where businesses have struggled in the past.

Despite complaints about the wait, online reviews have raved about “some of the best coffee” in the D.C. area.

While Gute Leute currently only offers coffee, Sang says the plan is to add pastries to the menu soon.

“Right now, we’re trying to focus on quality and service,” he said. “But we plan to offer croissants, breakfast sandwiches and pastries.”

Before Gute Leute, Sang operated the Korean fried chicken restaurant Noori Chicken in Annandale, which closed last week. He also co-owns the quick-serve Courthouse restaurant Bibimix with Sean, who himself owns the Korean bakery Paris Baguette in Fairfax.

Gute Leute joins a growing list of coffee options in the Ballston area, including the upcoming Roggenart Bistro & Café, the outdoor stand Ballstonian, and Slipstream, near the intersection of Wilson Blvd and Glebe Road.

Hat tip to John Peck

Six new businesses, including the popular chains Tatte Bakery & Cafe and Van Leeuwen, are setting up shop in Crystal City.

Promotional signs for the new shops are visible in the ground-floor windows of one of the two 300-foot residential towers at 1900 Crystal City Drive. Approved in 2020 and under construction by 2021, the towers — set to open early next year — will house 811 residential units and nearly 40,000 square feet of retail space.

The complete lineup includes a trio of D.C.-based businesses — Chinese-French fusion restaurant Bar Chinois, Cuban café and bar Colada Shop and a nail salon called nailsaloon — plus New York City-based botox spa Peachy, which recently opened its second location in D.C.

Tatte, Van Leeuwen and Colada Shop have filed permits to operate along the pedestrian walkway behind the north tower — known as The Grace — at 269 19th Court S., according to county permit records.

JBG Smith, the predominant property owner in Crystal City and Pentagon City, declined to comment.

Boston-based bakery Tatte, known for its coffee, sandwiches and pastries, operates 11 locations in the D.C. area, including one at Clarendon Crossing, which opened in 2021.

Van Leeuwen, an ice cream chain headquartered in New York, currently operates three outlets in D.C. and plans to launch a fourth at Union Station. The Arlington outpost would be the brand’s first in Virginia.

Colada Shop operates six locations in the D.C. area and, as part of its Arlington expansion, plans to open a new location in Clarendon.

Hat tip to Matt Miller

Rappahannock Coffee is set to close at the end of November, making way for a new café with a different name.

Located at 2406 Columbia Pike, the independent coffee shop first opened in May 2001, according to its website. Owner Gi Lee said that after two decades of brewing coffee, he is ready to retire.

“I’m too old,” Lee told ARLnow as he served a line of caffeine-deprived customers Tuesday morning.

While ARLnow could not confirm the exact last day of operation, Lee’s landlord, Yao Yao, said it would likely be in the final week of November.

The same week Rappahannock Coffee closes its doors, a new café plans to open under a different name, according to Yao.

“He’s gonna sell coffee and sandwiches… his plan is to start his business here as soon as possible,” Yao said.

Jose Lopez, the owner of the upcoming café, did not respond to requests for comment before our publication deadline.

A handful of other retail stores along Columbia Pike surround Rappahannock Coffee, including vape shop Thicker Cloudz and electronic repair shop Wireless Rxx.

At one point, the commercial strip that houses the businesses was slated to become a mixed-use development. Local developer B.M. Smith submitted plans to Arlington’s Historic Affairs and Landmark Review Board in 2013 and in 2020 the County Board approved a special use permit.

B.M. Smith sold the properties to Yao in 2020, he said. The new owner put the plans on hold in 2022, citing economic conditions.

Yao maintains that he has no plans to revive the mixed-use development proposal any time soon, citing high interest and construction costs.

“The business environment and the economy are not very conducive for to the new development at this time,” he said.

The new café will operate in the interim and will have big shoes to fill. Over its nearly two decades in business, Rappahannock Coffee built a loyal following that has kept it afloat despite competition from the Starbucks that opened in the Penrose Square development across the street in 2015.

For Rappahannock, its following comes down to its in-house roasts.

“Big corporate coffee shops can’t control the time between roasting and brewing, giving up on achieving true coffee flavor,” the website reads.

A new deli and coffee shop has opened in Virginia Square and it is hoping that Arlington mid-century nostalgia will bring in customers.

Super Garden Market has opened at 3444 Fairfax Drive, in the former Coffee Beanery location that closed earlier this year.

The new name references the original Super Garden Market and Deli — which operated in the same location for 47 years, before closing over three decades ago. Although the new coffee shop shares the same name as its predecessor, Asefaw Redai Sultan, the shop’s owner, clarified there’s “no relation” between the two.

“We are renewing the name,” Sultan said. “Everyone remembers the older name… we hope they’ll come back.”

Unlike the original grocery store and deli, Super Garden Market sells breakfast sandwiches, salads, smoothies, pastries and coffee.

Eventually, Sultan plans to expand the menu to include lunch items and is waiting for the state to greenlight a liquor license to sell beer and wine.

Sultan, a resident of Arlington for two decades, acquired Coffee Beanery from a friend he said was eager to leave the coffee industry. He filed for a new business license with the state this past June, according to the State Corporation Commission website.

Sultan says he began refurbishing the space in July. Super Garden Market held its grand opening this past Sunday.