Women’s sports fans could soon have a bar of their own in Arlington.
Sarah White, a longtime local restaurateur and partner at Westover Taco, is in the process of buying out of the taqueria at 5849 Washington Blvd. After that?
“I’m transforming it into Northern Virginia’s first women’s sports bar,” White told ARLnow.
As the soon-to-be sole owner of Westover Taco, which opened in late 2023, White plans to implement some cosmetic changes while retaining the restaurant’s name, chef and seven television screens, which at the moment typically show men’s sports.
Following the rebrand, White said those TVs will prioritize games by professional women’s sports teams, from the Washington Mystics and Washington Spirit to the D.C. Divas and new Women’s Pro Baseball League, which debuts this August.
“We’ve got so many great women’s teams here, and I really think that it’s time we started giving them their time and we started focusing on that,” White said.
Plans for a new interior are still in the works, White said, but they could include local artwork, a mural or sports team memorabilia across the walls.
The opportunity to start a women’s sports bar came as White’s business partners at Westover Taco mulled whether to sell the restaurant following the October closure of their Lost Dog Cafe on Columbia Pike. The taqueria wasn’t losing money — but it wasn’t turning much of a profit, either. That’s when White stepped in.
“The guys decided that they wanted to remove it from their portfolio,” White said. “It’s my only restaurant, and I happen to be able to fund it and buy it myself. I’ve wanted to own a restaurant on my own for a very long time, and this was the opportunity.”
White, who is also the operator of Cowboy Cafe, is planning the rebrand with interior designer Claire Tamburo and partnering with DJ Melanie B to continue hosting community events. She also wants to look into official team sponsorships, while marketing the space as a fundraising venue for more local high school teams.
“We often do things to support the boys’ baseball teams,” White said. “But rarely do we even get asked to support any of the women’s athletics or the girls athletics … We want to reach out and say, you know, ‘hey, we’re available for you, too.'”
White said her outlook on sports changed when she met Lois Cook, owner and team captain of the D.C. Divas, who spoke during a Fairfax Rotary Club meeting in 2022.
“I was just enamored by her story and how passionate she was about playing sports, and about particularly this team,” White said. “She just lit a fire in me that made me feel the same way for it, and now, I just can’t get enough.”
The two became friends, and for the past year, White has provided volunteer marketing services to the Divas. Last July, she accompanied the team as they competed in the WFA National Championship against the St. Louis Slam in Canton, Ohio.
It was ESPN2’s most-viewed women’s tackle game of all time, pulling in more than 200,000 live viewers, according to the team.
As investment in and viewership of women’s sports rises nationwide, White says she is excited to be a part of it. She isn’t the first to come up with a women’s sports bar concept, as others have popped up in cities across the country. At least one bar, The Sports Bra, has announced plans to franchise across four U.S. cities following its 2022 founding in Portland, Ore.
“I want to see how we can make sure that there’s a place for everyone at the table, right?” White said. “That’s what restaurants do. We make sure that everybody eats. We make sure that everybody has a place, and just making sure that [women’s] sports is part of that too, I think, is phenomenal.”
Going forward, fans of Westover Taco’s titular menu item won’t have to fret over the rebranding. They’ll still be able to get their fix, White said, and the menu will be expanding to include more Tex-Mex entrees.
White’s announcement comes during Women’s History Month — something she reflected on while discussing Westover Taco’s future.
“What are the odds of being here at this pivotal moment when we see things changing? … It really is just this pivotal time of, we’re never going back, and women are seeing this monumental change,” White said. “I just got a bank loan by myself. My husband isn’t on it. There’s no co-signer on that loan at all, and my mother couldn’t have applied for that by herself. Just watching all of it change is miraculous.”
The sale is expected to close next week or the following Monday.
