Following New York, Parliament Opening Shops in Philly and Charlotte

Parliament Espresso & Coffee at the New York Historical Society. Facebook photo.

After debuting nearly one year ago on within the New York Historical Society building, Parliament Espresso & Coffee Bar is making two more high-profile openings with its second and third shops, in Philadelphia and Charlotte, North Carolina, respectively.

The Philadelphia shop is scheduled to open this Friday, Nov. 24, while the Charlotte shop, which will have seating for nearly 100 guests, is scheduled to open in mid December. Yet another Parliament coffee bar is being planned for the six-block Miami downtown redevelopment project MiamiCentral.

The Philadelphia location will be located in Center City within the Graham Building at 30 S. 15th St., across from Dilworth Park and City Hall. The Uptown Charlotte location will be at the corners of South Tyron and East Third Streets. All of Parliament’s existing locations feature La Marzocco GB5 espresso machines.

The company says it sources all its coffees from Henry Hueck of Ramacafe/La Virgen Coffee Estates. Ramacafe is a long-running network of family-run farms based near Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The La Virgen farm has a state-of-the-art coffee quality lab, and Parliament says it returns a portion of proceeds to the farm for various community improvement projects.

While it may seem Parliament has come out of nowhere, the company is actually part of the Philadelphia-based Starr Catering Group, which services dozens of major venues throughout New York, Philadelphia and other East Coast cities. In 2015, Starr founder Stephen Starr sold the catering business to Elior North America (then called TrustHouse Services Group). Elior is part of the French Elior Group, one of the world’s largest multinational foodservice and catering companies.