Where Black Hawk County Goes for Coffee Now: How Waterloo and Cedar Falls' Hangout Map Shifted This Year

"Shared community spirit requires shared community spaces," Mobin Khan told The Courier this fall, standing in the coffee shop he had just opened on West Fourth Street in downtown Waterloo.

That line fits the whole county's coffee map this year. The two new sit-down coffee spots that local news covered in Black Hawk County this year both opened in buildings that had other lives first. One is a tiled storefront that used to be a street-food restaurant. The other is a railroad depot from 1870. Meanwhile the year's other new coffee arrival, on University Avenue in Cedar Falls, is a to-go stand with drive-through lanes, and a sit-down cafe that had been on Kimball Avenue since 2011 closed in July. So the places to linger are moving downtown, and the places built for speed are going up along the corridors.

A former street-food storefront on West Fourth

TreeHaus is at 223 W. Fourth St., on the west side of downtown Waterloo, in the tile-covered storefront that used to be Cibo di Strada. Khan and Simeon Talley run it. The Courier reported they bought the building earlier this summer, and the soft opening started on a Wednesday with 10 employees, the two owners included.

Khan calls it a "living room for the neighborhood," and the room is set up to match. There's seating, a small free library, merchandise from local businesses, and high-speed Wi-Fi. The syrups and recipes are made in-house. The soft-opening menu had five seasonal drinks with flavors like pumpkin, ginger, and brown sugar, plus the usual vanilla and caramel.

The coffee is small-batch from Chocolate Fish Coffee in California. Nearly everything else comes from within a short drive.

• Baked goods: Con Amor Bakery in Waterloo and Bluff & Crumb in Cedar Falls
• Tea blends: Tea Cellar in Waterloo
• Milk: Hansen's Dairy in Hudson

The location matters as much as the menu. TreeHaus sits directly across from the Waterloo Convention Center. Khan pointed to the Sportsplex, Courtworks, and other buildings under construction as signs that this part of downtown is "on the upswing." The same owners are also behind the project at the abandoned former Central Battery Building at 217 W. Fifth St.

The depot at Main and Fifth

Cedar Falls got its own new place to sit in an even older building. Frankie's Ice Cream Parlor opened at 422 Main St. on Saturday, August 8. That's the old depot on the corner of Main and Fifth, a few feet from the abandoned railroad tracks and next door to the Cedar Falls Public Library.

The building opened in 1870 as the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad depot. According to Julia Huffman-Klinkowitz, collections manager and curator at the Cedar Falls Historical Society, it kept that job until the last passenger train left Cedar Falls in the late 1960s or early 1970s. After that it became an upscale restaurant, then a Regents Bank branch, then a suite of offices. It's the only depot building left in town.

Darron Olson runs Frankie's, and the parlor is named for his family's 8-year-old dog. The Olsons also own the Nook, an independent bookstore, and the Reader's Cup next door to it on Main Street. The menu goes well past ice cream. There's frozen yogurt, coffee and other drinks, pizza, paninis, soup, breakfast foods, and snacks. Olson has said he plans to hang vintage photos showing how the building changed over the years.

One timing detail: a June story set the opening for the first week of July, but the doors actually opened in August. If a friend says the place "opened this summer," they're right either way.

Out on University Avenue, built for the car line

The other big coffee story of 2026 went up at 6003 University Ave. in Cedar Falls. The 7 Brew there is the first in the Cedar Valley. The Courier calls it a "to-go only caffeine stand," and its official grand opening was for the drive-through lanes. The stand ran limited hours for two weeks before the late-August grand opening, with dozens of cars lined up. Grand-opening week included free-drink "community hours" and a T-shirt giveaway on Aug. 29.

The chain advertises more than 20,000 drink combinations. Along with coffee, the menu has energy drinks, fizzy sodas, teas, lemonades, smoothies, and shakes. Those long lines show how much demand there was for coffee you can grab from the car on the University corridor. The same demand built something very different from what opened downtown.

The gap on Kimball Avenue

Waterloo also lost a place to sit this year. Cabin Coffee Co. at 2040 Kimball Ave. closed for good after July 5, ending a run that started in 2011. The note on the door spoke to longtime regulars:

"It's been a place of strength for so many of you. A place of Joy. A place you've come to fit in and experience the seasons of life."

The owner wrote that the decision wasn't "about a person or a lack of loyal customers," and listed timing and reinvestment among the reasons. The note also said Cabin Coffee's franchising and support team wanted to find "someone else to pick up the baton," and asked anyone interested to message the shop's Facebook page. As of early October 2026, we haven't seen any public report of a new operator or a new tenant at 2040 Kimball Ave. That's an open question, not a sign that nothing is happening.

The 2026 coffee map at a glance

What fills the hours after the coffee shops close

TreeHaus keeps daytime hours, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends. Later in the day, the year's other new neighborhood gathering spot is on College Hill. Hill Street Dive opened Sept. 5 at 2217 College St. It's run by Brian Hoyer, Sarah Hoyer, and Colin Hoyer, UNI alumni who describe it as a neighborhood bar. Food trucks park there on weekends, and the bar serves its own hot dogs, popcorn, and bratwursts. It follows the same pattern as the coffee openings. It's a small, owner-run spot in an established neighborhood district, not on a commercial corridor.

If you want the next date to circle, it's Saturday, Oct. 17, when TreeHaus holds its grand opening at 223 W. Fourth St. across from the Waterloo Convention Center. The Courier didn't publish a schedule for the day, so check the shop directly before you plan around a specific time.

Who opens and closes along Fourth Street, Main Street, and Kimball Avenue shapes the blocks around them. That's part of how we read a neighborhood when we help people buy or sell across Black Hawk County. If you have a question about a building, a block, or what's moving into the space down the street, Wapsie Realty is glad to talk it through. Contact us anytime.