A new cafe, bakery and restaurant called The Morning Batch is set to open its doors Monday, Nov. 16, at 345 Wabasha St. N. in downtown St. Paul, bringing espresso drinks, daily-baked pastries and a Mediterranean-leaning menu to a storefront that had sat empty.
The business is owned and operated by Fouad Abdelgelil, according to Bring Me The News, which reports he previously owned Master Chef on Grand Avenue.
At The Morning Batch, the menu will stretch across breakfast, lunch and dinner, with espresso drinks and pastries baked fresh daily. Head chef Elsayed Gaballah will handle gyros, tabbouleh salad and rice platters, and the cafe will offer both dine-in service and online ordering, per the same report.
A Ribbon-Cutting With City Leaders
Abdelgelil and his team plan to mark the opening with a ribbon-cutting at 11 a.m. Monday, joined by Mayor Kaohly Her and Council President Rebecca Noecker. The grand-opening event is set to include free coffee, Moroccan mint tea and bakery samples for visitors.
Once open, The Morning Batch plans to run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, staying closed on Sunday. The address has stood empty since Gray Duck Tavern abruptly shut down in July 2024 after seven years in business, as the station's report on that month's restaurant closures noted.
Part of a Broader Downtown Push
The opening lands amid what the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance has described as a surge of new small businesses filling vacant downtown storefronts. The Alliance's Grow Downtown program, launched in 2022 to connect building owners with small-business tenants, had worked with 18 businesses as of August, according to St. Paul Publishing. “In 2026, we have seen an explosion of new businesses move downtown and we are only halfway through the year,” the Alliance said in that report.
A Twin Cities Pioneer Press report from August detailed how the Grow Downtown program helps startups negotiate leases as low as $1 a month for their first six months, plus utilities and insurance, and found that almost half of downtown St. Paul's latest business arrivals are run by entrepreneurs of color, per TwinCities.com. That same report counted three new or recently expanded coffee shops among the wave of downtown openings.
Other Recent Twin Cities Restaurant Debuts
The Morning Batch joins a string of recent Twin Cities restaurant openings. Midway Diner opened near Allianz Field around Sept. 28 as the first establishment to debut in the new United Village development, with a lunch menu built around soups, salads, sandwiches and a smashburger, according to Axios. Elsewhere in St. Paul, Bewick Cafe took over the former Groundswell space, starting with daytime service before eventually adding a full dinner program, the Star Tribune reported.
