Gourmet Café. Shop. Catering. Founded by a Turkish-American mompreneur who traveled the world with a Turkish Coffee Truck.
We are a gourmet coffee shop primarily offering Turkish coffee, regular coffee, herbal teas, sweets, high-end coffee & tea sets, automatic Turkish coffee makers, and vintage accessories. Our coffee shop is located at Tysons Corner Center (Tysons 1) on the ground floor by Lord & Taylor. In addition to a wide array of high-quality products, our business also provides experiential event-catering services at selected events in the Washington DC metro area, serving parties of 50 – 1000 people with traditional Turkish coffee presentations and cuisine tastings.
Turkish coffee culture has greatly influenced the world since the 16th century as the first coffee brewing technique in history. However, in today's $132 billion coffee industry, the awareness and cons 15 years ago, a Turkish coffee ambassador, Gizem White, started a long journey to change that. The first step was creating a community through a digital cultural house for Turkish coffee lovers. In 2012, she created a non-profit Turkish coffee truck, and since then, she visited six countries and 16 cities, including the USA, Europe, and Canada, with this all-volunteer gastro-diplomacy project handing away thousands of free and delicious Turkish coffee. Her coffee diplomacy efforts didn't go unnoticed. She was featured in major American media outlets many times. The Washington Post named her as the Turkish Coffee Lady. The US government officially recognized her project on the congressional record as a friendship-building initiative between countries. The popular brands, such as META, covered her story on their websites, highlighting the importance of her efforts as a Turkish coffee ambassador and a woman entrepreneur. The Turkish coffee lady name got stuck. Later, she started the first-ever Turkish coffee shop in the USA with the same name in 2017 and became a success story in Virginia in 2020. She was also named as one of the most influential Turkish Americans under 40 back in 2016. Unfortunately, she had to put a hold on her dreams in 2018 after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and just as she was trying to recover, the worldwide pandemic hit small businesses. However, she didn't stop after all these challenges and founded a new Turkish coffee and culture house in Old Town, Alexandria in 2022. She also established a non-profit called the Turkish Coffee Lady Foundation to empower female entrepreneurs.