THE BLOCK Pop-Up Harbors Mobile Coffee Culture

The business of mobile cafe carts is a game of cat and mouse: the carts announce their pop-up locations mainly through social media and customers have to keep track of where they can grab their favorite matcha or try out the hottest new coffee. But what if your favorite drinks and sweet treats were all in one place? THE BLOCK is a free event that organizes local Seattle mobile cart vendors to one location for everyone to enjoy. This weekend's event was the second gathering with hundreds of people flocking to the Fairview Market Hall Sunday, May 17 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Over 20 vendors were selling every type of matcha, variations of Vietnamese coffee, hojicha, energy drinks and pastries. Starting at 11 a.m., there was a line to enter the market hall with barely any lapse in attendance all throughout the day. 

With a modern, sleek gray and black cart, vendor Cafe 86 started as a wholesale business selling matcha online (which they still do) before adding on wheels. After experiencing discrimination at her previous job in biology, Zaryab Bushra decided to forgo that and finally get a kickstart on her dream business: starting a cafe. Bushra, along with her husband, was ready to take it on herself. So in one night, they came up with a name—the eight for her August birthday and the six for her husband's June birthday—applied for licenses and permits and launched their business online. 

Now they have a menu which includes matcha, hojicha and coffee. Some of their popular drinks are the Pudding Matcha, which has banana pudding, and the Banana Shaken Espresso. 

“One drink that I had to take out [of the menu] multiple times because people would not try anything else [besides it] was our olive gray matcha latte with the white chocolate macadamia cold foam,†Bushra said. 

If you see a cart with a line of syrups and cans of Red Bull, chances are it's Bloom Energy Bar selling their Redbull Italian sodas, regular Italian sodas, lemonades, dirty sodas and other fizzy drinks. A lineup of their drinks are always going to be full of color: blue, pink, purple glitter, topped with cotton candy, peach rings or gummy stars.

“We honestly started it for fun; most of us made drinks before we even had a business,†one of Bloom's business owners Liyan Salameh said. “We're family friends. We were hanging out one time and decided, ‘why not?'â€Â 

For Bloom, who opened a brick-and-mortar location in Bothell just a few months ago, THE BLOCK offered a chance to find new customers. 

“We haven't done a ton of events in downtown Seattle, so this helps us reach people that might just be walking around downtown rather than having to commute to us. It's great for exposure,†Salameh said. 

With a minimalist white and brown look, Leyla's Coffee was another drink cart found at the market. They started by importing and selling coffee and raw green coffee beans after Leyla Ibrahim, the founder, traveled to Ethiopia, where she is originally from, and visited coffee farms. Eventually, they expanded and started the coffee cart. 

“The whole idea behind Leyla's coffee is to bring back the idea of having slow coffee because in Ethiopia, we do have a slow coffee culture, and we sit around. It's a communal experience,†Ibrahim said. “Coming here in Seattle and seeing everyone just running, grabbing the fastest drink and chugging it down, the biggest drink they can, kind of messed up coffee for me. I was like, no, we need to bring that slow coffee again.â€

Leyla's coffee currently has four staples on its menu: a cocoa cookie butter with espresso and a cookie butter cold foam, a vanilla toffee latte, a cinnamon cardamom latte (which is one of the most popular) and a dulce de leche latte, which is a creamier version of a caramel latte. 

A sentiment that all three drink carts shared was a sense of community they felt being included in THE BLOCK event. 

“It was nice that everybody was in one space, and it's also nice as pop-up owners to connect with each other because you barely see each other. So many pop-ups are Saturday and Sunday, and I can't even go to any Saturday or Sunday because I am doing my own [pop-up],†Bushra said.