A coffee brand with roots in Ann Arbor, Michigan is bringing its iced lattes, house-made syrups and an irreverent sign to Tempe this month. Misfit Society Coffee Club is targeting a soft opening on Nov. 23 at 1047 S. Terrace Road, inside a new Verve apartment building catering to Arizona State University students.
The Campus Customer Base
According to Arizona State University, 51,200 students were enrolled at its Tempe campus in fall 2026, offering context for the student population near the planned shop and its potential customer base.
The Tempe shop will be Misfit Society’s first location outside Michigan, according to Axios. The planned 1,700-square-foot cafe is set to have 50 indoor seats and 30 patio seats, with daily hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A grand opening is planned for January 2027, timed for ASU students’ return after the holidays, the report says.
Misfit Society got its start in 2023 as an extension of Social Misfits, a Grand Rapids restaurant, before growing into its own brand in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, according to The Michigan Daily. The company now operates two Ann Arbor locations: one beneath the Six11 apartment complex on East University Avenue, where it first opened in March 2023, and a second inside a Verve apartment complex on South Forest Avenue.
A Sign That Gets People Talking
Part of Misfit Society's identity is its self-described edgier atmosphere, and co-owner Brad Goulding told Axios that the shop's sign reads, “coffee, cocaine and croissants: we have two of the three.” Goulding also said the brand's Sugar Daddy, a brown sugar latte and its top seller, sells partly because of its name. That drink has had staying power — an earlier Ann Arbor Observer report from 2023 already described the Sugar Daddy as the top seller at that time.
The Tempe menu is expected to carry over the brand's signature drinks alongside pastries, sandwiches and breakfast burritos, the same Axios report notes. Misfit Society is known for iced lattes, house-made syrups and matcha, and the brand's owner has said its syrups are made in-house by hand, as reported by The Michigan Daily.
Recognition Back in Michigan
The brand's reputation has grown well beyond its original storefront. The Michigan Daily named Misfit Society Coffee Club Best Coffee in its Best of Ann Arbor 2025 awards, as noted by The Michigan Daily, noting that brown sugar and lavender lattes rank among the cafe's most popular orders. The outlet also reported that the chain's most popular location serves between 700 and 1,000 people per day.
The apartment-building cafe model isn't new for the brand. Ann Arbor Observer reported that the coffee stand inside that city's Verve student apartment building draws customers beyond just residents, who take advantage of its lounge-like lobby setting, according to Ann Arbor Observer. That same outlet listed the Ann Arbor shop's hours as 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends, a shorter daily window than what's planned for Tempe, where the cafe is set to stay open until 7 p.m.
For now, the Nov. 23 date remains a soft-opening target and the January grand opening a plan, according to Axios's reporting. Whether the Sugar Daddy and that provocative sign become fixtures of the ASU coffee scene the way they have in Ann Arbor is something Tempe customers will find out for themselves in the coming weeks.
