For $900 Million, La Colombe Adds Value to Chobani’s “Core Yogurt Portfolio”

Todd Carmichael, Hamdi Ulukaya and J.P. Iberti / Photograph via La Colombe

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome to another thrilling week of the Foobooz food news roundup. We’re deep into the holiday season now, and with Christmas and New Year’s Eve right around the corner, most restaurants are just turning and burning as fast as they can. But ‘most’ isn’t the same as ‘all’ so here we are again with a collection of all the most important news happening in Philly’s food scene. We’ve got sushi, we’ve got cocktails, we’ve got some Tastykake-flavored beer. But let’s kick things off with the biggest business news of last week.

La Colombe Sells Out

And you know what? For $900 million, you would, too.

Chobani, the Greek yogurt company, has finally acquired the local-gone-national coffee company founded just off Rittenhouse Square by Todd Carmichael in 1994. This deal is a surprise to precisely no one—Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO at Chobani, came on as an investor (and the majority owner) back in 2015 and the two companies have been tied together in various ways since then. But on Friday of last week, Ulukaya and Chobani made it official: They’d formally acquired La Colombe for the aforementioned buttload of money (and yes, that IS the official fiduciary idiom for $900,000,000.00, btw).

I’ll let the professional wordsmiths from Chobani’s PR department explain what comes next:

“As part of Chobani, La Colombe will continue to operate as an independent brand. This approach allows for collaboration and knowledge sharing between the two companies while preserving the unique identity and innovation that La Colombe is known for. La Colombe is a growing player in the fast-growing $5 billion U.S. RTD coffee category, and its offering will prove highly complementary to Chobani’s core yogurt portfolio […] Under Chobani ownership, La Colombe will not only benefit from the Company’s extensive retail execution, marketing and cold chain capabilities to grow its multi-serve offering, but through its recently announced sales and distribution agreement with KDP, La Colombe will also meaningfully expand the reach of its single-serve product line and have access to grow underdeveloped channels like convenience retail.”

First, I’m calling dibs on “Core Yogurt Portfolio” as the name of my new band.

Second, that’s basically a whole lot of words to say that La Colombe will now be available in a lot more retail stores, and in a lot more formats (including single-serving coffee pods, thanks to a previous partnership with Keurig Dr. Pepper).

Third, La Colombe will continue operating with at least the appearance of independence as the acquisition proceeds. Chobani will “unlock La Colombe’s true sales potential […] enhance La Colombe’s procurement practices, deliver meaningful cost synergies, and elevate its overall operational performance.” La Colombe, meanwhile, will continue to make and sell coffee, which is what it’s always been best at.

Moving on…

Want To Check Out the New Omakase in Old City?

Ogawa Sushi & Kappo / Photograph by Mike Prince

Because it’ll cost ya. $200 to be exact — not including tax or tip. But let me tell you why it might be worth it…

See, there’s a new spot that just opened over the weekend at 310 Market Street. It’s called Ogawa Sushi & Kappo which likely means nothing to you if you’ve never spent any time hunting for sushi in Washington D.C., but might mean a LOT if you have.

Chef Minoru Ogawa opened his namesake Sushi Ogawa in Dupont Circle back in 2016. It focused on Edo-style omakase, got a mention in the D.C. Michelin Guide, and was such a hit that Ogawa opened a second restaurant last year called Kappo which was all about Wagyu beef.

And now he’s come to Philly.

Ogawa knows what he’s doing. Michelin bump aside, he’s a second-generation sushi chef whose father and brother have been running a sushi restaurant in Tokyo’s Nippori neighborhood for 50 years. This is a guy that has lived and breathed raw fish for most of his life, and who came to the United States hoping only to show all us dummies how they do it at home. That’s exactly what he did for a bunch of years in D.C., and now it’s what he hopes to do in the former Ikki space, just a couple doors down from Fork, for those who can get a reservation.

Because THAT is the complicated part. Ogawa (along with three chefs that he brought with him from home) is currently running Ogawa Sushi as a 23-course omakase restaurant with just 12 seats and two seatings, five nights a week (Wednesday through Sunday). The sake and whiskey are from Japan, the fish is all coming in from Toyosu market in Tokyo, the team has a combined thirty years’ experience cooking with Ogawa, and the menu looks extraordinary, offering up everything from crab with Hokkaido uni and wagyu with foie to sashimi otsukuri (toro, ocean trout, tuna and shiromi), hot chawanmushi, flights of nigiri, miso soup and dessert. But reservations are already scarce. Currently, they’re booking seats through mid-January, and there isn’t a prime-time seat left to be had. A lot of nights are completely sold out already. And the place has been open for all of a couple days.

Oh, and there’s more, too.

The Market Street space actually has a second floor which, come spring, will be turned into a 30-seat dining room that will feature many of the dishes from the omakase menu downstairs, plus a full bar and a focus on the Wagyu beef that Ogawa likes so much. No word yet on an exact date, but since the place literally just opened, I think it’s fair to give them a little time to get their legs under them.

Anyway, if a $200 omakase experience sounds like your thing and you’ve got the scratch on hand, this sounds like an excellent way to spend it. Just be quick, because those reservations are going fast.

And Hey, Speaking of New Fish Restaurants…

You guys remember Amina? It was the African-influenced Southern restaurant serving New Orleans gumbo and Nigerian hot chicken opened by first-time restaurateur Felicia Wilson in a 70-seat spot in Old City last year.

Well it looks like Wilson made good on her dream of restaurant ownership, because she just announced that not only is she opening a second location in University City, but she’s doing it as the “anchor retail tenant” on the ground floor of 3.0 University Place — the new eight-story, 250,000 square foot lab and office building at 4101 Market Street. She’ll have the corner spot, right at 41st and Market, and this new restaurant is going to be nearly twice the size of the original Amina. In Old City, she’s got room for 70. Here, there’ll be 118 seats inside, and another two dozen on the sidewalk when the weather allows. She’ll also have a small stage, live jazz and blues, and a 20-seat raw bar because this place is going to be called Amina Ocean and will feature “Southern seafood fusion” on the menu, according to Wilson. “The theme and vibe of the restaurant will provide a Tulum-meets-Morocco feel.”

And okay, cool. That’s nice and all. There’s no hard date for an opening or anything, but buried in the middle of the press release was a note that Amina Ocean was going to be Wilson’s third restaurant. Which is weird, because as far as I understood things, the original Amina was her first spot—opened after a career spent opening and operating childcare centers. Then there was Amina Ocean, coming at some point in the future. And I’ll admit that I’m not great at math (if I was, I probably wouldn’t have become a writer), but I’m confident that one restaurant + one restaurant = two restaurants, not three.

But as it turns out, Amina Ocean is going to be number three for Wilson because she’s got a whole OTHER concept in the works outside of the Amina-verse. Sometime early in 2024 she’s looking at opening the first location of a new fried chicken brand called BlackHen at 120 Chestnut Street. As a matter of fact, if you check out Amina’s Instagram and click on the post dedicated to Darryl Harmon, it’s right there, too, listing him as “Chef/Partner of Amina and BlackHen.”

So yes. It has been a busy year for Wilson and Harmon. And it sure doesn’t look like things are going to be getting any quieter in 2024.

Now who wants some leftovers?

The Leftovers (Boozy Edition)

I didn’t plan it this way, but this week’s Leftovers are all about alcohol, in one way or another.

To begin, we’ve got a brand new cocktail menu debuting this week at the Continental Midtown, in collaboration with the team from Unfiltered Hospitality — a collective of owners and bartenders based in Miami who have consulted for some of the best bars in the city.

Back in the day (that day being 20 years ago, easy), the Continental was THE destination for martini-drinkers looking to see and be seen. It had that retro vibe, that Mad Men flair, some space-age weirdness, and it served as a center of cocktail culture in the city.

Flash forward two decades: Philly is full of great cocktail bars. We’ve got some of the most creative bartenders in the country. There are neighborhoods in this town where you can’t huck a rock without it going through the front glass of some high-tone speakeasy or dimly-lit cocktail grotto.

So in order to put themselves back near the center of Philly’s boozy conversation, Starr Restaurants has brought in these hired guns from Miami to jumpstart a whole new cocktail program and allow the Continental to “reclaim [its] status as a trend-setting drink destination.” This means nine new martinis, made using modern techniques, tableside flair and “bold new flavors” like pandan, framboise, shishito peppers and … vanilla vodka?

Seriously?

Okay, whatever. The new list is interesting. It reimagines a lot of the classics through a 2023 lens. And it even updates the Continental’s famous Astronaut martini (formerly the Buzz Aldrin) with orange sherbet and edible glitter. So for those of you out there who just aren’t getting enough glitter in your diet, the new cocktail menu debuts this week. Let me know how it goes.

Next, after rolling out weekend brunches last month, the crew at Enswell is now launching a brand new lunch service. They’re serving weekdays, from 11am to 3pm, and offering mortadella sandwiches, hoagie salads, pastries and breakfast sandwiches for those of us who don’t really do mornings.

But in keeping with this week’s theme, Enswell is also dropping a new cocktail program. They’ll be doing wine and draft Old Fashioneds during lunch, but as soon as the sun goes down, we’re talking bourbon, amaro and lemon graced with a paper plane garnish, a Glasgow 75 with scotch, honey and lime topped with sparkling wine, and the NA Kyoto Fog which sounds delicious — Earl Grey, tart cherry, lemon and egg whites. And if you’ll notice, not one of those drinks had edible glitter in it. Just sayin’.

Down in South Philly, it looks like the old Primal Supply Meats location is showing some signs of life. No, not from Heather Marold Thomason and her crew of butchers, but according to the new liquor license application posted on the glass, it’s Owen Kamihira (of El Camino Real) and his son Leksander.

So what do we know? Not much, but Kamihira has been looking to expand for a while. The license is carrying the name “Superette Passyunk” — though those names don’t always hold once the license is legal. And according to a trusted source in the neighborhood, there’s been some build-out happening at the space for the past couple weeks. So I’ll be keeping my eye on this one, for sure.

Finally this week, if you’re not a regular reader of Snack Foods & Wholesale Bakery Magazine, you might’ve missed the news that two Pennsylvania icons — Victory Brewing and Tastyake — have finally joined forces for a collaboration sweet ale with the pound cake and cinnamon flavors of Tastykake Koffee Kakes.

Sound kinda gross? Of COURSE it does. But that’s not the point. The point is, if you’re not excited about two of the biggest names in Philadelphia’s beer and snack cake universe coming together to form some kind of sweet and boozy Voltron, then you might as well just move back to Indiana, Greg, because “kinda gross” is basically where Philly lives when it comes to regional delicacies. I mean, have you seen scrapple? It’s fucking delicious. It also looks like roadkill.

The Koffee Kake Ale will be available everywhere Victory is sold from now until mid-March. Further, on Friday, December 22nd it will be officially released unto the world with tastings and giveaways at Victory taprooms in Downingtown, Parkesburg, Kennett Square and right here in Philly (1776 Ben Franklin Parkway) from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oh, and if you’re one of the first 10 customers at any of those locations, you can win prizes. Nice, right?

The party will go on until the beer is gone. So save a six pack for me.