Arkibuna is serving espresso and community to students’ sleepy eyes and wide smiles, brightening their days with a caffeine kick and friendly conversations.

Starting off as a small-scale tent at the Alexandria farmers market in 2015, the business expanded to open their first coffee truck in 2018, which quickly became a staple in the Foggy Bottom community. Caffeine seeking customers come from all directions — the Metro stop, offices, dorms and apartment buildings — in search of warmth from their drinks as well as from meaningful interactions with owner and barista Eskinder Debebe.

The Arkibuna truck can be found parked outside the Whole Foods on campus, Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. The light brown truck features outlined coffee beans and a sliding order window with a large silver espresso machine peeking through, where steam blows from the top with each shot pulled. 

Debebe said he values the warmth of daily interactions with customers and said the exchanges are what keep his passion for coffee and community alive. He said he doesn’t need to ask regulars for their orders, he starts making the drink right as they walk up.

“I never thought that I would miss my work but coming here, especially winters where we don’t work,” Debebe said.

Debebe said Arkibuna was exploring business at farmers markets in the DMV and found an optimal location in Foggy Bottom because of its closeness to the corporate world and the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station. After the 2018 transition from a tent to a truck to maximize mobility and not have to hire employees for all hours of the day, he said he and his wife wanted a spot that would bring them loyal customers. He said food trucks do not often stop in the area, creating an opportunity for him to gain clientele and that he has found a welcoming community of coffee lovers in Foggy Bottom ever since.

“We figured out that there’s the school, there’s the hospital and the metro right there, so we tried it,” Debebe said.

Since then, he’s built a devoted clientele that keeps coming back for the coffee and friendly connections. Though his most popular drink to sell is an iced caramel latte, Debebe said he makes an effort to remember regular customers’ specific drink requests and specifications. Debebe said he asks students about their lives because he wants to know about customers’ days, their jobs or their final exams.

Debebe said his journey with coffee started at a young age because growing up in Ethiopia, people are constantly surrounded by coffee. He said he always knew he wanted to be a coffee innovator due to the focus on coffee in Ethiopian homes, where the process to craft the drink was about an hour long each day. He said because coffee has early roots in Ethiopia, it is their “livelihood” back home. 

“Our truck Arkibuna means ‘satisfying coffee’” Debebe said.

Debebe said a question he is often asked by customers is how he plans to “make it” given the steep coffee competition in Foggy Bottom, with several chain stores including Tatte, Peet’s, Starbucks and Whole Foods that are all within a 3 to 5 minute walk from the truck and are flooded throughout the day with eager customers.

Despite the fierce coffee climate around him, Debebe isn’t rushing to scale up Arkibuna anytime soon. After months of operating outside Whole Foods, he said the store’s manager offered him a chance to bring Arkibuna indoors and sell his coffee directly from inside the store, but he decided to keep his business in the truck.

“We have plans, but we don’t want to expand in big ways,” he said. “We want to take one small step at a time.”

Rather than chasing expansion for its own sake, Debebe chose to stay rooted in the community that helped build Arkibuna’s identity, creating a relationship with each customer. Now, the truck remains parked just outside Whole Foods for students and busy office bees to stop by daily and develop a one-on-one rapport between customer and barista.

“We don’t do anything besides coffee, so we want to do coffee perfectly, as much as we could, nothing without coffee and have a positive vibe,” Debebe said.

Sophomore Sofia Mocsi, who has previously written for the Hatchet, said the welcoming atmosphere fostered by Debebe around the truck is a refreshing change, especially in a fast-paced city, like D.C., which can throw friendliness to the wayside. Mocsi said once during fall semester finals season it was down pouring, and Debebe kept the truck open later for her and her friends to snatch coffees before getting back to studying.

“I miss that feeling a lot from home,” Mocsi said. “I wanted to go to school in a big city, but I miss walking into a coffee shop, and I recognize the baristas, I used to go there with my friends all the time in high school. I don’t think D.C. — obviously because it’s a city — has that sense of community necessarily.”

Mocsi said she embraced the opportunity to back a local business and after depleting her GWorld dining dollars, the money she made from her campus job as a student communications assistant was put into a caffeine boost from Arkibuna. Lattes start at $3.50 and a cup of hot black coffee at $2.05.

“I really do hope he keeps the small truck charm because in a city like this we have enough chains,” Mocsi said

Sophomore Anoushka Chopra said what stands out most is Debebe’s effort to build genuine relationships with his customers. Chopra said her dairy allergy inspired Debebe to experiment and later master an oat milk cold foam. She said it has been her go-to order on top of an iced vanilla latte.

“He was perfecting it for me,” Chopra said. “And he’s like, ‘You know what? I think I got it now.’ He’d always have me try it, it was really good.”