25 March 13th-March 19th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Strip Mall Monsoon Market duo debuts Phoenix coffee shop. BY SARA CROCKER A fter staring at the vacant coffee shop across the parking lot from their hip Phoenix bodega for three years, Monsoon Market owners Koral Casillas and Michela Ricci took matters into their own hands. The duo opened the cafe Strip Mall on Feb. 17. The idea started when Casillas, Ricci and another tenant in the Mercury Building, located on Seventh Street just north of Osborn Road, talked about wanting local coffee there, joking that Ricci should just bring in her old espresso machine. The group riffed about making coffee “by the strip mall, for the strip mall,” Ricci recalls. That notion, and the name, stuck with Casillas, who quickly mocked up a logo. “One of the things I wrote on the first logo was ‘surprisingly good,’ because strip malls in Phoenix are surprisingly good. You can find some banger mom-and-pop restaurants, independent businesses of all kinds,” Casillas says. “It’s the most Phoenix thing.” Casillas and Ricci aren’t strangers to coffee. The pair met around 2013 as assis- tant managers at Dutch Bros. Coffee. Before launching Monsoon, Ricci ran a mobile coffee cart called Early Bird Phx. Monsoon Market opened in November 2021. The hip outfit offers natural wines, small-batch treats and playful, artisan handicrafts. When Monsoon joined the strip mall, it was also home to Urban Beans, a vegan cafe. In January 2022, Urban Beans moved after 12 years at the Mercury Building and later permanently shuttered. The loss left a hole in the area. “There was this gap of having that third space and especially local coffee,” Casillas says. Strip Mall serves local brews and bites The cafe faces Seventh Street on the south end of the yellow horseshoe-shaped building. Casillas and Ricci outfitted Strip Mall just as they did Monsoon Market, pairing vintage designer and thrifted finds, which was an “exhilarating” hunt spear- headed by Casillas. Vibrant art by Phoenix’s Lady Egg is showcased throughout the cafe — whom the pair has also featured at Monsoon. There’s ample patio space, which will soon have furniture and shade. While the name Strip Mall is an homage to Phoenix’s most ubiquitous structure, it also references the team’s scaled-back approach to coffee. The menu is not centered around specialty or seasonal drinks, which Casillas and Ricci feel are already well-made and readily available at other local cafes. “We don’t need to do what everyone else is doing,” Ricci says. “We want to actu- ally go backwards and strip things down, get really basic and just do it really well.” Strip Mall works with Chandler-based Peixoto Coffee, which has a coffee Monsoon Market owners Michela Ricci and Koral Casillas have started a second business together. The friends met more than a decade ago while working at Dutch Bros. (Sara Crocker) Strip Mall opened on Seventh Street and Mitchell Drive on Feb. 17. The cafe serves cold brew coffee, lattes, matcha and snacks. (Sara Crocker) >> p 26 ▼ Food & Drink
