An opening day double-header for St. Pete’s Kahwa Coffee
The Rays had a sensational opening day Thursday, beating the Boston Red Sox 6-4 in a tense, sold-out game sent through the rafters of Tropicana Field with a three-run triple from Denard Span in the eighth inning.
Raphael Perrier and his Kahwa Coffee teammates won a sizeable victory, too.
Kahwa’s first location inside the Trop made its debut during Thursday’s game.
“We had a pretty good day,” understates Raphael Perrier, who co-founded the St. Pete-based company in 2006 with his wife, Sarah. “Everybody was excited about having good coffee. Even the owner of the Rays, Mr. Sternberg, said ‘Finally, there’s good coffee in the stadium.’ For us, that’s a big thing, because we’re bringing in good stuff from St. Pete.”
It’s been a busy month for the Perriers; their 13th location, in Miami’s Sunset Harbour district, officially opened for business Friday after a “soft” opening mid-month.
To celebrate, drinks – all of them – were on the house. That’s right, Perrier himself was in Miami all day, brewing espressos, lattes, cappuccinos, whatever hot beverage Miamians desired, and giving them away for free from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Award-winning chef Michelle Bernstein, a Miami resident and a big Kahwa fan, was guest barista from 9 to 11 in the morning.
According to Perrier, opening a Miami location was only logical. “We have wholesale customers in Miami,” he explains, “so we already had the connections. They like good coffee in Miami, you know? So we believed that we had something good.”
Still to come: More Kahwa cafes outside Tampa Bay. “We’re going to do a couple more shops in Miami, then Orlando, then Jacksonville … then all over,” Perrier reports. “We’re pretty established in Tampa, so now the idea is to do the triangle between Tampa, Miami, Orlando and Jacksonville. That’s the idea behind the whole thing.”
If you’re wondering, kahwa is derived from the Arabic word for coffee (“qahwa”), which is itself derived from the Turkish word kahve.
Kahwa’s first Miami location opened March 30.
