Call Your Mother will roast coffee at its new Old Town Alexandria location. Photograph courtesy Call Your Mother.
Call Your Mother. 1300 King St., Alexandria. Open from 7 AM to 4 PM.
Call Your Mother opens its 13th location—10th in the DC area—in Old Town Alexandria on Thursday, February 22. The outpost is the homegrown bagel chain’s largest yet with a new coffee roasting operation on-site.
“We’ve loved working with Lost Sock for the last six years. I just had this itch that I needed to scratch to do our own roasting,” says co-owner Andrew Dana. Call Your Mother is using a Brazilian bean to start, but eventually they’ll try out blends and other single-origin coffees. “The excuse to travel to places to discover beans is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
The “daily drip” coffee is called JoJo’s after Dana and partner Daniela Moreira’s one-year-old daughter. It will be available at all Call Your Mother locations beginning tomorrow, and Dana says they hope to eventually sell it at local grocery stores too. “It’s supposed to be a classic cup of diner coffee, just really good,” he says.
Otherwise the Old Town menu will be the same as the other locations with a mix of bagel sandwiches, quirky schmears (like a Cheez-It cream cheese), and pastries.
The larger footprint means customers can rent out part of the space for private events of up to 30 or 40 people. “If you want to have a birthday party or something, we got you,” Dana says.
Call Your Mother has further expansion in the works: The McLean “Lil’ Deli” truck will turn into a permanent location later this spring. They’re also opening a shop in Vienna this summer.
Food Editor
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
