South Block may be on the verge of an East Coast expansion, but for its next location, the regional juice and smoothie bowl chain is sticking relatively close to home.
Announced in a Halloween Instagram post, South Block’s 16th shop is set to open in The Field at Commonwealth (14383 Newbrook Drive) in Chantilly this summer. Construction will begin within the next couple weeks, South Block founder and CEO Amir Mostafavi told FFXnow in an email.
The shop, which serves smoothies, açai bowls, juices and toasts, will be situated alongside a Peet’s Coffee, UPS Store and Chipotle.
“We love Fairfax County,” wrote Mostafavi, who grew up in McLean. Following a 2020 opening in the Town of Vienna, South Block opened its first Fairfax County location last March in McLean’s Chesterbrook Shopping Center (6246 Old Dominion Drive).
The company also plans to start construction on a location in Fairfax’s Fair City Mall (9650 Main Street) this summer and is negotiating a lease in Springfield, Mostafavi wrote.
“Our longer term plan is to start expanding into new markets outside of the DMV, but we feel there [are] still a ton of amazing communities in the DMV that we would love to be a part of,” he wrote.
Private equity firm Savory Fund acquired a stake in South Block in a deal announced at the end of January. That deal keeps Mostafavi as the company’s CEO.
The new partnership aims to bring South Block up to 50 East Coast locations. South Block’s first storefront opened in Clarendon in 2011, and the chain’s most recent location opened last July in Amazon’s HQ2.
“More important than scale, where we add dozens more units, we want to grow the business from within and make sure that we grow the base of our cult following and the locations we currently have,” Savory Fund Managing Partner and co-founder Andrew Smith told FFXnow’s sister site ARLnow.
Following the announcement, Mostafavi told ARLnow that the entire South Block team will stay intact.
