HAMLET — Call it a coffee shop with an edge.
Customers filed in and out of Axe to Grind for the new business’ grand opening on Friday.
True to its name, the business owned by Stephanie and Zaidoon Al-Zubaidy, will combine the quaintness of a coffee shop — the grind — with axe throwing.
“When I purchased the building, the former owner had started the axe house — then COVID hit,” Stephanie Al-Zubaidy said. “We thought, ‘We can’t get rid of that, that seems like a ton of fun.”
The logo on the front window featuring a coffee pot and an axe is similar to her husband’s family crest, which has an Arabic coffee pot and a sword underneath.
In addition to coffee and tea, the shop also has a menu with a selection of salads and sandwiches.
The plan for the coffee house was to give the community a place to gather for meetings or short-term Wi-Fi, she said.
“So, I thought, ‘This is a really good combination.”
Al-Zubaidy said the project was a team effort, from the construction team to the chef who helped design the menu and the staff.
“This crew who has come from Rockingham and from Hamlet is just amazing,” she said.
An accountant by trade, Al-Zubaidy said she has been in the business world for years, including working as the director of finance for Novant Health. She and her husband also started a clinical research organization, which they sold in 2020.
“I decided that I wanted to do something like this and it seems a little bit more fun,” she said.
Despite the name, and her email address, Al-Zubaidy said, “I don’t have an axe to grind with anybody!”
Al-Zubaidy said the five-lane axe house in the back of the former downtown barbershop on Hamlet Avenue is slated to open in two weeks, though Tank Collins — who was having lunch with fellow members of Pee Dee Region Paranormal — was allowed to take a few throws.
“People really do love it; it’s really competitive,” she said. “There’s a technique to it.”
Axe-throwing businesses have become popular over the last several years, with sites opening in not only metro areas like Raleigh and Charlotte, but also smaller towns including Archdale, Clemmons and New Bern.
The business plans to have beer, wine and “nighttime snacks” once the lanes open.
On May 7, Axe to Grind will host the James Gilmore Trio. Al-Zubaidy said Gilmore is traveling to historic jazz sites and Hamlet is the birthplace of late jazz legend John Coltrane.
The coffee-axe combo isn’t the Al-Zubaidys’ only business venture in the Seaboard City.
They are working with Lisa Lowery, a master distiller in Kinston, to open a distillery in the former Birmingham Drug building on Main Street.
With a lot of work left to do, Al-Zubaidy said the project is expected to be complete by the end of 2023.
Tank Collins tries his hand at axe throwing.
