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.