A Winning Partnership with Winn-Dixie for Florida’s Kahwa Coffee

Kahwa Coffee at the Winn-Dixie Hyde Park in South Tampa, Fla.

The prominent Southeast United States grocery chain Winn-Dixie earlier this month unveiled the first locally focused variation on its flagship concept store, including an exclusive café wholesale relationship with 10-year-old Kahwa Coffee Roasting Company of St. Petersburg, Fla.

Winn Dixie has promised that its new wave of stores will have an expanded focus on specialty items from local producers and/or certified products in departments including produce, meat, beer and wine, and other specialty groceries, while partnering with Kahwa exclusively for the first of its next-generation in-store cafés.

“We’re thrilled to expand an already successful partnership with Winn Dixie by being the exclusive coffee shop of this new concept,” said Kahwa owner Raphael Perrier, who founded the roastery with his wife Sarah and has since helped bring the brand to more than 500 wholesale clients throughout the U.S. “We can’t wait to see more pop up in other locations.”

In an announcement sent by the agency rkc.me on behalf of Kahwa, a local Winn Dixie representative characterized the local focus as providing competition to traditionally upmarket grocery purveyors such as Whole Foods.

“When we buy local, everyone wins — we want to offer locally made and locally sourced products, so everything is funneled back into the community,” Winn-Dixie senior manager of local business, Nicole Hatfield, said in the announcement. “We started this program because we are committed to connecting our customers to the highly innovative suppliers that live right in their communities.”

The first Kahwa-supplied Winn-Dixie café is in South Tampa’s Hyde Park neighborhood at 2100 W. Swann Ave.