Walk north on 25th Street from Broad on a Tuesday morning and the sidewalk tells you something the maps haven't caught up to yet. There are more paper coffee cups in hand at 8:15 a.m. than there were a year ago, and more of them are moving uphill toward Q Street than downhill toward the river. A neighborhood that spent the last decade being described as a dinner district has, quietly and mostly in the last fourteen months, added the two things it was missing: an early cup on the north end and a proper lunch in the middle.
The thesis of this post is simple, and if you live on the Hill you have probably already sensed it without articulating it. Church Hill did not "get" a restaurant scene in 2025 and 2026. It got a daytime one. And most of the pieces that closed the gap trace back to a single operator, working four addresses inside a fifteen-minute walk of one another.
The gap that opened in 2024
For anyone who moved into Church Hill North in the last few years, the missing piece was obvious. The commercial spine on 25th Street between Broad and Nine Mile Road was already anchored by The Broken Tulip, Sub Rosa Bakery, Alewife, and other establishments, but that concentration sits below Marshall. Walk north of Oakwood and you were, until recently, in a coffee shop desert.
That description isn't editorial. Axios Richmond used almost exactly those words this spring, noting that the north side of the neighborhood had been a bit of a coffee shop desert, especially after Rise closed in 2024. Rise's closure left a real hole. Riverbend Roastery, the shop that most north-end residents defaulted to, sits down at 2831 E. Broad, which is fine if you are heading to work but a genuine hike if you are trying to grab a cup and get back to your kitchen before the kids leave for school.
The four addresses that closed it
The infill happened in a specific order, and it's worth naming the addresses because the density is the story.
- Chimbo Sandwich Shoppe, 2709 E. Marshall St. — Opened in early 2025 in the former 8½ space, which closed late last year after around seven years in the neighborhood. Chimbo runs lunch and dinner as a to-go counter with bread baked in house.
- Peaberry Coffeehouse, 1301 N. 32nd St. — Opened in March 2026 at the corner of 32nd and S, a few blocks from Oakwood Playground and Soul N' Vinegar. Hours run early: Monday through Friday 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
- Riverbend Roastery, 2831 E. Broad St. — Not new, but relevant, because it now roasts the beans served three blocks north at Peaberry.
- Liberty Public House, 2811 M St. — The anchor. Same ownership as the three above, and the reason a coordinated daytime pattern was even possible.
Four addresses. One walkable loop. The furthest two are about eight minutes apart on foot.
Why one operator now anchors the block
The name behind all four is Alexa Schuett, and the sequencing is deliberate. Schuett took over Liberty Public House in 2019 inside the historic East End Theatre building on M Street, then refreshed Riverbend, then opened Chimbo, then Peaberry. That's four active locations in a single neighborhood.
The Chimbo decision was driven by a specific piece of resident feedback. As Schuett told Richmond BizSense when the lease was signed, "So much of Church Hill is dinner only. There's not enough lunch here. Let's go make sure that there is a little more lunch to be had." Schuett and her partner Austin Curtis are leasing the space from building owner and fellow restaurateur Kendra Feather of Garnett's, Laura Lee's and The Roosevelt. The point of that detail: the block's landlords and operators are, at this stage, people who already own other successful restaurants a few blocks away. That's a different economic pattern than a chain expansion or a new-to-market operator taking a flyer on a corner.
Peaberry followed the same logic on the coffee side. The Cava Cos. mixed-use building at 32nd and S was recently built as infill, and Schuett said feedback from customers at Riverbend helped drive the decision. "A friend of a friend reached out and said, 'Hey I live over this way and I walk all the way to Riverbend. I'd love if we had a Riverbend-esque space over here.'" The shop serves Riverbend-roasted beans with a menu of baked goods and grab-and-go items, since the space isn't outfitted with a full commercial kitchen. It's a coffee shop that is functionally an extension of a coffee shop three blocks away, which is a strange sentence to write and also exactly what the north end had been asking for.
For anyone who cares about how the space actually reads, Richmond Magazine described the interior as a queer-owned and -operated cafe with cozy seating, fern-green tile and loads of natural light. Axios added that the exterior is bright blue, and the interior pairs a comfy mustard yellow sofa and rose-colored velvet seats placed beside the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows.
What lands next
The infill isn't finished. Two more openings are close enough to matter for how you plan a Saturday.
FABLE, Church Hill. A coffee shop and florist under one roof, targeted for winter 2026, taking a storefront just up the street from Sub Rosa. Its location matters because it clusters with rather than duplicates existing coffee. FABLE sits on the 25th Street corridor near the Sub Rosa footprint, while Peaberry sits seven blocks north. Two coffees, two audiences, no overlap.
Oro, Church Hill. Also targeted for 2026, described in RICtoday's coming-soon roundup as a restaurant in the process of renovating a natural-toned interior, with wholesale fresh pasta to follow. Fresh pasta with a wholesale arm is a small but meaningful signal about where the block's supply chain is heading. It means the next round of restaurants in the neighborhood may be sourcing pasta from within the neighborhood.
Sub Rosa itself is the other quiet piece. After the fire that closed the bakery, just over one year after a fire forced its closure, Sub Rosa has opened its bakery doors once again. That reopening restored the anchor of the whole 25th Street cluster and made FABLE's chosen storefront viable.
A weekday morning, rewritten
The practical result of all this is that the choreography of a Church Hill weekday morning is different than it was in the summer of 2024. If you live near Chimborazo Park, you can walk to Peaberry in under ten minutes, grab a coffee that opens at 6 a.m., and be back home before the school bus. If you live closer to Broad, you can wait for Sub Rosa to open, cross the street to whichever coffee counter fits the morning, and stop into Chimbo on the way home from a midday errand.
If you have out-of-town guests staying over, the itinerary is now writable without a car. Coffee at Peaberry, walk south on 32nd to Marshall, cut west to Sub Rosa for bread, back east on Broad to Alewife or The Roosevelt for dinner. That loop did not exist as a single sentence in 2023.
There is a real estate observation buried in this, and I'll keep it short because the point of this post is the neighborhood, not a listing. The blocks between Marshall and Q on 32nd Street were, until recently, quiet residential streets with the occasional corner store. The Cava Cos. infill building that houses Peaberry is one of a handful of ground-floor commercial spaces built in the last five years on that stretch. When Sperity Real Estate Ventures handled the Chimbo lease and a longtime operator like Kendra Feather owns the building, the pattern reads less like speculation and more like a block that operators want to stay on.
For residents, the takeaway is smaller and more useful. The list of things you can do on foot before noon in Church Hill has grown. The names on that list are Peaberry, Riverbend, Chimbo, Sub Rosa, Alewife, The Roosevelt, and, before the end of the year, FABLE and Oro. Every one of them is within a fifteen-minute walk of every other one.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own block or your own front door, or if you have friends asking what daily life on the Hill actually looks like right now, Carrie Robeson knows the corridor well and is happy to walk you through it. Let's Connect.