The Living Well Café Ethiopian restaurant recently opened near Kiyoko Express on Route 1 in downtown College Park.
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While the Living Well Café may have been open for the past month, a recent grand opening event shed new light on its more ethnic flare.
Owner Roman Seyoum served free samples of her jerk chicken and vegetarian Ethiopian dishes to customers last Saturday, drawing an audience of primarily university students to her restaurant.
While her menu was originally designed to focus on organic coffee and homemade paninis, Seyoum was shocked to find that what attracted most of her customers — and what convinced them to purchase the food after sampling it — was the ethnic dishes.
While business has picked up for this small, cozy café, the lack of summer foot traffic has resulted in a slow start. With fewer pedestrians traversing Route 1 in the summer, Seyoum says its been difficult to draw people to her establishment.
She hopes that another grand opening event, to be held this Friday, will help her business. This time, she will be offering the coffee.
For that event, Seyoum hopes to transform her warm, quiet café with music, flyers and free samples of her smoothies and her organic coffee drinks.
“I firmly believe that once they know what my coffee is like, the line will go all the way down there,” she says proudly, pointing down Route 1.
-By Saron Yitbarek
UPDATE: Living Well Café has rescheduled its second grand opening event from Friday to Monday. The event will feature free samples of organic coffee throughout the day, beginning at 9 a.m.