A South Korean coffee and dessert chain with roughly 1,750 stores in its home country is preparing a storefront for Twosome Coffee & Cake, in the heart of Old Town Alexandria — and the company’s own job ads suggest it could be the brand’s first location in the United States.

City of Alexandria permit records identify a space at 404 King St. as “Twosome Place.” On a sidewalk encroachment application filed with the city, the project team answered the city’s question about the name of the business with “Twosome Place,” and classified the use as a restaurant — specifically, a bakery and café.

A commercial building alteration permit for the same address, issued June 23, covers what the city describes as a new tenant layout across 2,689 square feet, with construction valued at $270,000. The permit was applied for on April 6 and runs through January 2027.

For scale, that is somewhat smaller than the roughly 3,250-square-foot Life Alive Organic Cafe, which opened in June in the same ground-floor retail section next to The Alexandrian hotel.

City records list SYN Architecture + Engineering, a Fairfax firm, as the applicant on the project, with MLU Corporation as general contractor. The property owner is listed as AB FH Alexandrian Hotel Owner LLC — the same ownership entity behind The Alexandrian hotel and the ground-floor retail that has been reworked along this stretch of King Street over the past two years. SYN’s published portfolio leans toward Korean and Asian food-and-beverage projects in Northern Virginia, including Tous Les Jours, Issho Izakaya & Sushi, Leewha Modern Chinese Tapas & Bar and several independent coffee concepts.

Two more city records fill in the picture. The Board of Architectural Review’s docket for May 20 included an administrative approval for mullion installation at 404 King St. — a reworking of the vertical dividers in the storefront window system. And on July 15, the city issued an administrative encroachment permit described in the record as “Twosome Place Outdoor Dining,” authorizing use of the public sidewalk in front of the space for benches and street furniture. The application indicates the address has no existing King Street Outdoor Dining permit, meaning the sidewalk setup would be new to the storefront. That permit carries a Sept. 30 expiration, and final inspections had not been completed as of this week.

Also read: Alexandria’s Coffee Map Keeps Growing

The U.S. debut

Separately, A Twosome Place has posted job openings based in Alexandria, including a bilingual marketing coordinator role. In those listings, the company describes itself as expanding into the U.S. market with its first location opening in the D.C. region later this year, and says the role would support the American launch in coordination with its marketing team at headquarters in South Korea.

The chain signaled the move last fall, when trade publications reported that it was preparing to open its first company-owned U.S. store — a renewed international push after the company withdrew from China. At the time, no site or timeline was disclosed.

Neither the company nor the city has publicly confirmed that the King Street storefront is that first U.S. location.

About the company

A Twosome Place opened its first store in Seoul’s Sinchon neighborhood in 2002 and grew into one of South Korea’s largest café chains, with approximately 1,700 locations. The brand is built around pairing coffee with dessert — it is best known domestically for its whole cakes — and the name is a nod to that pairing.

The company began franchising in 2008 and was spun off from CJ Foodville as an independent corporation in 2018. In November 2021, it was acquired by the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm.

What the chain is known for

A Twosome Place has not released a menu for the Alexandria space, and there is no indication yet how closely a U.S. store would follow the Korean lineup. But the brand’s reputation at home rests on a few specific things.

The best known is the Spoonable Abak, a Korean reinterpretation of the American icebox cake — cookies and cream layered together and chilled, eaten with a spoon rather than a fork. Introduced in 2015, the line sells roughly 6 million units a year and has passed 45 million cumulative, according to Korean business press. The company recently extended it with chocolate-crunch versions aimed at younger customers.

The other pillar is a strawberry chocolate fresh cream cake, nicknamed “Scho-saeng” in Korea, which the company describes as topped with fresh strawberries over chocolate whipped cream studded with crunchy chocolate balls. It anchors the chain’s year-end holiday marketing, and one recent year the lineup sold about 3.2 million units — up roughly 30 percent over the prior year. A mascarpone tiramisu is the third signature, alongside New York cheesecake, red velvet and chocolate mousse cakes, macarons, and a savory side of sandwiches, paninis and salads.

The pairing is the whole idea behind the name: “Twosome” refers to coffee and cake together, and the company’s slogan translates as “Dearest Cake, Always Coffee.” The chain has also built buzz at home through collaborations with brands including Disney, Porsche, Hennessy and Netflix.

The third storefront

Twosome would be one of three food-and-beverage tenants to fill the ground-floor retail along this stretch of King Street in Old Town.

Life Alive Organic Cafe, the plant-forward chain founded in Lowell, Massachusetts, opened at 402 King St. on June 9, taking roughly 3,250 square feet with seating for about 70 indoors and 30 more on the patio.

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream, the New York brand known for its custard-style and vegan scoops, followed nine days later on June 18. Both sit on the ground floor of the building that also houses The Alexandrian Old Town Hotel, at the corner of King and South Royal streets.

Van Leeuwen Ice Cream and A Twosome Place are already business partners overseas — and the arrangement is more formal than a passing connection. Van Leeuwen signed a master franchise agreement with A Twosome Place at a ceremony in February, making it the operator that brings the New York ice cream brand to South Korean customers. The first Korean store opened near Seoul’s Gangnam Station in early July with 32 seats and two dozen flavors, and Twosome said two more Seoul locations would follow the same month. South Korea is Van Leeuwen’s first market in Asia.

Stay tuned for an opening date for Twosome Coffee & Cake in Alexandria!