Rogers-based Onyx Coffee Lab is planting its flag in north Fayetteville, with plans to open its 10th Northwest Arkansas cafe at the sprawling Drake Farms development in early 2028. The 4,780-square-foot cafe is slated for West Drake Street and North Mansfield Avenue, and it's expected to employ somewhere between 20 and 30 full-time and part-time workers once it opens its doors.
The announcement, first reported by Talk Business & Politics, marks a milestone for Drake Farms as well as for Onyx: the coffee company is set to become the development's very first commercial tenant. Two additional Onyx locations elsewhere in the region are already in the works, according to a company spokeswoman, and both are expected to open before the Drake Farms cafe welcomes its first customers.
Drake Farms itself is no small project. The outlet describes it as a more than $1 billion mixed-use development spread across 165 acres in north Fayetteville, situated near Washington Regional Medical Center and Interstate 49. A separate March report from the same publication had pegged the project at $1 billion, a discrepancy that hasn't been resolved in available reporting. Either way, the numbers point to one of the region's biggest bets on future growth.
A Neighborhood Built Over 15 Years
Developers envision Drake Farms growing over the next 15 years into a full mixed-use neighborhood, with roughly 2,400 homes and 1.3 million square feet of healthcare, medical and commercial space eventually filling out the site. Additional homes, businesses, workplaces and community spaces are also planned for the years ahead, the report notes.
The project is already moving. Drake Farms has started leasing studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in its first phase, giving residents an early look at what the community will become even as the bulk of the commercial build-out, including the future Onyx cafe, remains years away.
Why Onyx Chose Drake Farms
For Onyx co-founder Jon Allen, the move is about more than adding a location to the company's growing footprint. Allen said Fayetteville's coffee community embraced Onyx and helped shape its values and culture over the years, and he described Drake Farms as a chance to realize a long-held vision for specialty coffee service. He said the goal is for the cafe to be woven into daily life rather than functioning as just a destination people drive out of their way to visit.
Jeremy Hudson, CEO of Specialized Real Estate Group, framed the partnership in similar terms, saying Onyx reflects Drake Farms' broader goals of local roots, thoughtful experiences and bringing people together. Those themes echo what Onyx has built elsewhere in the region, including at its Bentonville cafe inside Bud's Preserve Park, Onyx at The Preserve, which sits directly on the Greenway and was designed by Allen in partnership with architect Marlon Blackwell and the team at Marlon Blackwell Architects, according to Sprudge.
That Bentonville cafe began its soft opening in June 2026, with expanded service rolling out through the summer, and it offers a glimpse of what a full-scale Onyx cafe experience can look like beyond espresso drinks: breakfast, daytime dining, dinner, cocktails, wine, events and full-service hospitality, per the same outlet. Whether the Drake Farms location will mirror that expanded concept hasn't been detailed, but the comparison gives Fayetteville residents a sense of the ambition behind Onyx's growing portfolio.
