Cup A Joe, the Hillsborough Street coffee shop that's been pouring cups for NC State students and faculty since 1991, has signed a lease for a third location less than a mile from where it all began. The new spot will sit at 3625 Hillsborough Street, a corner building most recently occupied by Crafty Crab Cajun Seafood, which closed the space in April 2026.
News of the lease was first reported by the Raleigh News & Observer, which noted that Triangle Business Journal had initially broken the story of the signed lease. Co-owner Andi Macko, who runs Cup A Joe with her father Jeff Gold, told the paper the project is still in the planning stages and that they're not ready to release detailed information about a concept or opening date for the new shop.
The building itself has a layered history. It was originally constructed as an Applebee's in 1991. In November 2019, CityPlat LLC announced a 10-year lease with Crafty Crab for a Concord property, followed three months later by a separate lease for 3625 Hillsborough Street, according to CityPlat LLC. The standalone, 4,942-square-foot structure sits on a 0.95-acre lot at the corner of Hillsborough and Gorman streets, near both Meredith College and NC State.
A High-Traffic Corner Near Campus
Whatever Cup A Joe ends up putting in that space, it won't lack for visibility. A LoopNet listing updated in September 2026 reports 18,500 vehicles per day for the property.
The new site sits under a mile from Cup A Joe's original location at 3100 Hillsborough Street, which opened on October 15, 1991, founded by Dave Sullivan as one of the first specialty coffee houses and local micro-roasters in Raleigh. Before starting Cup A Joe, Sullivan had worked in California as a high school history teacher and head basketball coach at Riverside High School — the alma mater of Reggie and Cheryl Miller — where he developed his interest in roasting coffee while grading papers at a local Diedrich Coffee shop, according to his obituary published on Legacy.com. Sullivan died in December 2023 at age 66, and Macko and Gold took over operations afterward.
The original shop built a devoted following that outlasted decades of change on the corridor. Sullivan told NC State's student newspaper, Technician, in an October 2018 interview that a core group of active and retired NC State faculty members had occupied the front table at the 3100 Hillsborough Street shop every morning since 1992.
Mission Valley's Rocky Road Back
The Hillsborough Street expansion comes as Cup A Joe marks 35 years in business, and after the company worked through its own pandemic-era setback at its second location. Cup A Joe's Mission Valley shopping center store on Avent Ferry Road closed in 2021 due to pandemic-related staffing shortages, but the owners kept the commercial lease throughout the closure, using the space as a prep commissary before reopening customer service on August 11, 2025, Macko told Technician in a November 2025 report. The News & Observer's own account of the timeline dates the Mission Valley reopening to Tuesday, June 24, 2025.
Whichever date marks the official return, Mission Valley's revival set the stage for the current expansion push. The Avent Ferry Road location originally opened in 1995 to serve students living on the south side of campus, per the same Technician report.
A Corridor In The Middle Of A Building Boom
Cup A Joe's move lands amid a wave of redevelopment reshaping Hillsborough Street. In July 2026, developer Core Spaces opened Hub Raleigh, a 12-story, 2,195-bed student housing tower at Hillsborough Street and Cox Avenue — the largest single residential project in the corridor's history, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of the $220 million project, which added nearly 2,200 student beds within walking distance of Hillsborough Street storefronts.
Not every business has weathered the changes. Fast-casual restaurant Cali Burger announced this month it would close its 3415 Hillsborough Street location after property owner CityPlat slated the 0.36-acre parcel for a new 275-unit apartment redevelopment, Hoodline reported. Further east, developer Dalian Development demolished the historic 500 block of Hillsborough Street in April 2026 to clear land for a mixed-use apartment building, razing storefronts that once housed long-standing local businesses such as Montgomery Violins, according to Axios Raleigh.
Infrastructure along the corridor is shifting too. The North Carolina Department of Transportation proposed permanently closing the nearby Beryl Road railway crossing, which carries roughly 7,500 vehicles daily, to address congestion and safety hazards near Meredith College — part of a plan that would extend Beryl Road to Royal Street and add a new traffic light, Hoodline previously reported.
For now, Cup A Joe's plans remain in the early stages, with Macko declining to share a concept or timeline for the 3625 Hillsborough Street space. But the lease itself marks a milestone for a business that has spent 35 years serving the same stretch of Raleigh — one that now looks dramatically different than the neighborhood Dave Sullivan opened his doors in back in 1991.
