A tucked-away alley off 8th Street in downtown Sacramento has a new reason to draw foot traffic: Kaway Cafe, which opened Sept. 22 at 726 Merchant St. with a menu built around Filipino flavors like ube, pandan and calamansi. The small specialty shop serves coffee, matcha, hojicha and tea, giving downtown workers and residents a fresh option just steps from the busier corridor nearby.
The cafe describes itself as a new Filipino-inspired spot specializing in matcha and coffee, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee. Its name carries its own meaning: Kaway translates to “to wave your hand” in Tagalog, per the same report. That gesture of greeting seems fitting for a shop the owners hope will feel like an extension of home.
A Menu Built on Ube, Pandan and Calamansi
The drink list leans heavily into ingredients associated with Filipino desserts and street food. There's a buko pandan latte made from the leaves of the tropical pandan plant, alongside ube lattes made with the purple yams native to the Philippines, the Bee reports. Rounding out the menu are an Earl Grey calamansi iced tea, a turon latte and a matcha mansi soda.
Those flavor choices place Kaway squarely inside a wider shift happening in specialty coffee. A new wave of Filipino coffee shops nationally has been playing with flavors like jasmine and jackfruit, according to Eater, part of a broader embrace of ingredients once considered niche. Eater also points to a 2025 Tastewise consumer insights report finding that among Gen Z, interest in Filipino food is higher in coffee than in any other food or beverage category.
Following a Growing Trend, With Roots Elsewhere
Sacramento isn't the only city seeing this shift. Filipino-inspired coffee shops are opening in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, according to Perfect Daily Grind, which notes that ube and pandan are becoming mainstream ingredients in coffee shops worldwide. The outlet cites a Datassential forecast predicting ube would outperform 88 percent of all other foods, beverages and ingredients from 2024 through 2027, with its menu presence growing by 48 percent nationwide.
Eater's rundown of the trend also names other Filipino coffee businesses gaining attention, including Baby's Kusina + Market in Philadelphia, Side Practice Coffee in Chicago, Kalesa in Portland, Obet & Del's in Los Angeles and Teofilo Coffee in Carson, California. Down in Long Beach, Teofilo Coffee opened a location on April 13 offering four coffee species sourced from the Philippines — arabica, robusta, liberica and excelsa — alongside an ube latte and a rotating menu of matchas and pastries, according to a report from the Signal Tribune.
Filling a Space Left by a Departed Neighbor
Kaway Cafe took over the address previously occupied by Bumble Bear Coffee, which moved over the summer and became a mobile cafe cart set up at 770 L Street, the Bee's report notes. The new owners have said they wanted the cafe to feel welcoming, a place to come in, gather, and stay awhile. They've also said they were inspired to open a shop that felt like home, one serving the Filipino sweets they grew up with but filtered through their own imprint.
For now, Kaway Cafe is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, with the owners saying hours of operation will expand at a later date. The cafe joins a broader crop of downtown coffee openings this year, including Baker's Brew Cafe at 621 Capitol Mall and Crème Coffee at 1011 7th Street, part of a stretch that has helped push Sacramento to No. 16 among the 100 largest U.S. cities for coffee, according to a WalletHub ranking cited in a separate Sacramento Bee report. The same ranking placed the city 19th nationally for coffee shops per capita.
