Cup A Joe’s Mission Valley location has returned to the historic shopping center on Avent Ferry, opening its doors Aug. 11 after closing in 2021 due to complications resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The revival of the local coffee shop, which originally opened in 1995, has brought students back to the Mission Valley Shopping Center and restored this space in the community, offering a spot to study, relax or have coffee and food with friends.
The store was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and issues with staffing both the location on Hillsborough Street and in Mission Valley were the main reasons for closing this location.
Co-owner Andi Macko said that, as a business that mostly employed college students, finding enough employees during a time when most people were quarantining and staying at home was difficult.
“The understaffing was due to COVID. People weren’t working,” Macko said. “We mostly hire college students also. So college students are probably working from home, not necessarily out needing jobs if they don’t have to.”
Combined with the lack of staffing, COVID saw less people being out and generating less business, Macko said. However, when the store was closed, the owners kept the lease on the Mission Valley location.
“So it was kind of that combination of things, and we kept it. We closed it, but we kept it for a good couple of years as a kind of prep commissary,” Macko said.
With most of the campus focus being on Hillsborough Street, students living on Western Boulevard, Avent Ferry or Centennial Campus can enjoy another local business near them once again. The Mission Valley shopping center serves an important purpose as it is one of the only main hubs of businesses available to students on that side of campus.
George York, the president and CEO of York Properties, the firm that manages Mission Valley Shopping Center, said considering NC State students when developing areas around campus has always been a focus for the firm.
“If you look at a full campus map of NC State University, this shopping center is right in the heart of it,” York said. “So we’ve always tried to consider that when we were leasing and managing it, not exclusively for NC State students, but will things work well with a heavy student or university-focused population around it.”
York said keeping the character of properties like Mission Valley is important. Where centers could be torn down and replaced by high-rise housing buildings, retention of character in places like Mission Valley or the High Park Village Shopping Center is part of the firm’s values.
“We’ve tried to keep that neighborhood character, and it’s one of those that would probably make sense to tear it down and build a three-story building with apartments or condos over retail, but it’s doing great like it is, right?” York said. “The projects we’re involved with, we want to be proud to be involved with them.”
York said the current businesses in Mission Valley are here to stay for the next few years from the perspective of their leases, which include businesses like Cup A Joe.
“I don’t think you’ll see a huge difference in Mission Valley for five to seven years at a minimum,” York said. “So anybody that’s a student today can expect pretty much what’s here and hopefully continually getting better while they’re here.”
As the Hillsborough Street location, which opened in 1991, and Mission Valley’s location have grown, so have the customers and the community around Cup A Joe.
Macko emphasized how the community of customers around Cup A Joe is part of what makes the business what it is today.
“Whereas the other store, the original, people in the neighborhood have been going there since forever. Plus, the kids are grown up and going there as well. That’s kind of the biggest thing at this point — it’s a lot of the same people,” Macko said.
For the Mission Valley location in particular, Macko said it being part of the shopping center is what makes it different for students compared to the location on Hillsborough Street.
“It’s almost more student-centered because it’s a shopping center, and it’s like a pathway into the university,” Macko said.
Macko said the Hillsborough Street location has become the more popular and notable location of the two, but she said that makes the Mission Valley location feel all the more local and welcoming, which gives the location its charm.
“People come when they’re in town because they’ve heard of it, or because someone told them to go,” Macko said about the Hillsborough Street location. “Whereas this one is like the people who live nearby, the people who work nearby, the people who are passing through.”
