Blank Street Coffee is coming to Penn, bringing students another spot to grab their morning caffeine and giving the campus coffee scene a new chain to contend with.<\/p>\n
The coffee retailer, which raised over $100 million<\/a> from investors this August, will open near the Penn Bookstore at 3603 Walnut St. Originally scheduled<\/a> for late summer, the store\u2019s official opening was delayed amid ongoing construction.<\/p>\n Dibba Iran-Parasti, Blank Street\u2019s marketing director, wrote in a statement that the University City location will open \u201cbefore the end of the year.\u201d The storefront will be one of the company\u2019s largest brick-and-mortars in the country.<\/p>\n The Blank Street of today is a far cry from the tiny, battery-powered coffee cart that opened in Brooklyn six years ago. The company quickly attracted venture capital investors, who saw an opportunity to scale its streamlined coffee shop model.<\/p>\n That rapid expansion has also drawn criticism<\/a> from social media users and neighborhood coffee enthusiasts who see the chain as a Wall Street-backed threat to local businesses.<\/p>\n Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n At Penn, Blank Street\u2019s imminent arrival is brewing a mix of reactions, including questions about the future of smaller coffee companies.<\/p>\n Hamza Shaikh, co-owner of Haraz Coffee House, said in an interview that Blank Street has \u201ca lot more resources and a lot more manpower\u201d than other chains.\u00a0<\/p>\n Blank Street is arriving on campus after a string of cafe closures. United By Blue closed abruptly<\/a> in 2023, and Saxbys closed last May<\/a> after the School of Dental Medicine ended the coffee shop\u2019s lease. Williams Cafe\u2019s location in Houston Hall also closed<\/a> just two months after opening<\/a> last year due to financial strain.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always a buzz that comes with anything new that opens,\u201d Shaikh said on Blank Street coming to University City. \u201cBut I think it needs to stand the test of time.\u201d<\/p>\n He said he was \u201cpersonally not that impressed\u201d by Blank Street\u2019s products, but predicted that it will be \u201cvery hard to compete\u201d with the brand\u2019s high-budget marketing and research.\u00a0<\/p>\n Haraz is located at 3421 Chestnut St., just two blocks from the new Blank Street. The Yemeni coffee concept has two additional locations in Philadelphia and several others across the United States.<\/p>\n For College first year Madeline Espinoza, Blank Street \u201ctastes like fake matcha.\u201d Still, she said in an interview that the new location could have \u201ca positive impact to the Penn community,\u201d adding that \u201cPenn students really love trendy things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n College junior Alison Roh, a self-proclaimed \u201cbig fan\u201d of Blank Street, said she expects the coffee shop will be a \u201chot commodity\u201d among students.<\/p>\n Blank Street opened a location in Rittenhouse Square last month. According to Roh, the spot\u2019s popularity has yet to wear off and \u201cit\u2019s almost impossible to get drinks there.<\/p>\n Roh acknowledged the \u201cconstant argument about small business coffee shops versus chains.\u201d For her, the appeal of places like Blank Street comes down to consistency. Customers \u201cknow what they\u2019re going to get\u201d at Blank Street, while small businesses can be more expensive and may not cater to everyone\u2019s tastes.<\/p>\n Port Coffee Co, a franchise with over five active locations and several others in development, also opened its doors<\/a> at Penn this summer.<\/p>\n Senior reporter Amy Liao covers student life and can be reached at liao@thedp.com<\/a>. At Penn, she studies philosophy, politics, and economics and cinema and media studies. Follow her on X @amyliiao<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blank Street Coffee is coming to Penn, bringing students another spot to grab their morning caffeine and giving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-299956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}