Babaloo Coffee Club is opening a second, three times bigger shop at Rea Farms

https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/babaloo-coffee-club/ is getting a second, much bigger home. Axios Charlotte reported this morning that the South End coffee shop will open a new location at 9825 Sandy Rock Place in Rea Farms, the mixed use development off Ardrey Kell Road in south Charlotte. Owner Manny Pérez Ochoa told Axios the target is late October or November, with no exact date set yet.

For a shop that opened in January 2025 in a storefront with a couple of tables, that is a fast second act. Here is what is coming, and why it matters to anyone who has waited in that little line on Winnifred Street.

The shop that started it

Babaloo Coffee Club is the work of husband and wife Manny Pérez Ochoa and Carolina Maury. The flagship is at 1425 Winnifred Street, Suite 117, in The Shops at Winnifred, the small retail strip in South End that also holds a yogurt shop and a paleta counter. Axios covered the opening in January 2025, and the shop has spent the twenty months since building a following on drinks that do not look like anything else in the neighborhood.

The tiramisu latte is the one people talk about, and Axios says it is still the best seller. The current fall menu adds a pumpkin spice cheesecake drink, a banana brûlée and a Snickers matcha, which Pérez Ochoa named as his own favorite. Matcha is a big part of the program, not an afterthought.

The catch has always been space. The South End shop has run mostly as a takeout and drinks operation, and Axios describes it as having just a couple of tables inside. On a nice Saturday, that means a lot of people drinking coffee on the sidewalk.

What Rea Farms gets

The new shop will be about 1,500 square feet, roughly three times the size of the flagship, according to Pérez Ochoa. That buys three things the original does not have:

• Real indoor seating, not a pair of tables.
• An outdoor area.
• A small kitchen.

The kitchen is the interesting part. Right now Babaloo’s food is limited by what a tiny drinks counter can hold. With a kitchen, Pérez Ochoa told Axios, the shop can do more pastries and empanadas. The empanadas fit the shop’s Latin American roots, and they are the kind of thing that turns a coffee stop into lunch.

Pérez Ochoa was careful to say the goal is to keep the small, cozy feel of the original even in the bigger room, and that the creative coffees and matchas stay at the center. Our read: the risk with any expansion like this is that the second location turns into a generic café with the first shop’s logo on it. The owners seem aware of that, and the fact that the Rea Farms shop is keeping the same look, just with more room, is a good sign.

Planned hours at Rea Farms are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, according to Axios. That is two hours later than the South End shop, which the shop’s own site lists as 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.

Why Rea Farms

Rea Farms is one of the busier retail developments in south Charlotte, a mixed use center with a cluster of restaurants and a steady flow of Ballantyne and Providence Road traffic. The new Babaloo will sit near https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/little-mamas-italian/ and /directory-category/restaurants-and-food/, per Axios. It is a very different customer than South End. Fewer people walking over from an apartment, more families and people who drove there on purpose.

That is also why the kitchen and the seating matter more out here. A takeout window works when the rail trail delivers a crowd every morning. In a suburban shopping center, you need a reason for people to stay.

For south Charlotte readers, this fills a specific gap. The area has plenty of chain coffee, and a handful of good independents, but nothing quite like Babaloo’s menu. If you have been driving to South End for a tiramisu latte, you will not have to for much longer.

What to order when you go

If the new shop keeps the flagship’s menu, and Pérez Ochoa says it will, the tiramisu latte is the obvious first order. It is the drink the shop is known for and the one Axios lists as the consistent best seller. After that, the matcha side of the board is where the shop separates itself. The Snickers matcha on the current fall menu is the owner’s own pick, and the seasonal drinks turn over often enough that there is usually something new on the sign.

The bigger change for regulars will be food. Empanadas and a wider pastry case are a real upgrade from what a drinks counter can offer, and they give the Rea Farms shop a mid-morning and lunch business the original never had room for. Whether the South End flagship eventually gets some of that food from the new kitchen is not something the owners have said.

Charlotte’s independent coffee scene has gotten crowded in the last two years, with new shops opening in Uptown, University City, NoDa and Plaza Midwood, and Axios has written about the lines that form at the buzziest of them. Babaloo has been one of those. The question with a second location is always whether the buzz travels. A shop three times the size, ten miles south, with parking and a kitchen, is a different bet than a tiny room next to the rail trail, and the owners are making it less than two years in. That is confidence.

Not in the directory yet

A note on how we handle this. The Rea Farms shop is not open, so it does not get its own directory listing until it is. The South End flagship is open and has been for over a year and a half, so that one is in the https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/babaloo-coffee-club/ listing now, with the address, hours and website. When the Rea Farms location opens, we will add it and update this story with the date.

If you are heading to the original in the meantime, it is at 1425 Winnifred Street, Suite 117, open daily. Expect a line on weekend mornings, and expect it to move faster than you think.

Know about a new business opening in Charlotte or the surrounding towns? Send us a tip and we will check it out.