The name is an address. 1122 was the number of the house in Erie, Pennsylvania, where Karlee McBride-Webber and Kayla McBride grew up, and the coffee shop they opened in downtown Concord in September carries it on the sign.
That is the whole idea of 1122 Coffee Co.: a room that feels like the house, brought to the neighborhood. Karlee put it more plainly to Axios. They are bringing their living room to the neighborhood.
It started on the road
The McBrides are a basketball family. Kayla is a guard for the Minnesota Lynx, drafted in 2014 after a career at Notre Dame, and Karlee played Division I basketball at Indiana and holds a degree in sports communication. Their father introduced all four McBride children to the game early and officiated high school games himself.
Growing up in that family meant traveling constantly, and the sisters made a point, in every city, of finding the local coffee shop instead of a chain, according to Axios. That habit is where the business came from. The shop they eventually opened is the one they kept looking for on the road.
The Charlotte Observer reported in July that the sisters had signed a lease for a ground floor bay at NOVI Flats, a mixed use building near Union Street, and were aiming for a September opening. The shop opened on schedule, and Axios and WSOC both covered the first days.
The people behind it
Karlee McBride-Webber runs the shop day to day, and she is the one quoted describing it as a one of a kind destination where people can connect, relax and build lasting friendships. Kayla is a co-owner whose basketball season keeps her away for part of the year, and Karlee describes her sister as a really, really good baker who plans to contribute a signature cookie to the menu once the season wraps.
A WNBA player opening a coffee shop in a Cabarrus County downtown is an unusual combination, and the sisters have been direct that the celebrity is not the point. The point is the room, and the room is small: 643 square feet, seating about seventeen, with a couch and lounge seating and a few tables for anyone working remotely.
What you actually order
The coffee is locally roasted and the syrups are made in house, with North Carolina ingredients where the menu can use them, according to WSOC. The signature is the 1122 Latte, blueberry and vanilla with blueberry cold foam, and there is a matcha topped with the same foam and a brown sugar honey latte. Teaser videos before the opening showed a vanilla chai latte and an iced blueberry matcha, which set the tone.
Food comes mostly from Ladolka Deluxe Bakery in Mooresville: pastries and cinnamon rolls, plus savory croissants with ham and cheese or spinach. The shop runs from early morning to late afternoon most days, a short Sunday, and closes on Tuesday.
Kayla McBride’s basketball career gives the shop a following it did not have to earn, and the sisters have been careful about that. She was drafted by the San Antonio Stars in 2014 after four years at Notre Dame, where she averaged more than fourteen points a game, and she won a world championship with the U.S. under 19 team in 2011. She has played overseas in Hungary, Russia and Turkey between WNBA seasons, according to a family profile. Karlee played at Indiana and averaged nearly seven points a game across 130 games before a career in sports communication.
The business is deliberately small. The Charlotte Observer reported the sisters were still finishing the build out and hiring in July, and the shop that opened is one room with a couch. The address in the directory should be checked against the shop’s own listing, since the building is known both by its Market Street frontage and its Barbrick Avenue suite, and both appear in coverage. Our Concord guide covers the rest of the downtown the shop now anchors.
The shop’s Instagram carried the build out from empty bay to opening day, and the sisters’ description of what they wanted, a room where people connect and build friendships, is the same one every neighborhood coffee shop gives. What distinguishes this one is that the people saying it spent twenty years in other cities looking for exactly that room, and decided the fastest way to find it was to build one with their childhood address on the door.
Why it matters
Downtown Concord has been rebuilding itself around Union Street for a decade, and the coffee shops that anchor a walkable main street are part of how that works. This one arrived with a name people recognized and an idea that was deliberately modest: a living room, seventeen seats, a good latte.
The sisters spent a childhood looking for that room in other people’s cities. Now it has their old address on the door, and Concord gets to be the place where they finally found it.