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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The South Korean café chain preparing a storefront at 404 King St. has built a Virginia corporate structure around its American launch, and state records show Alexandria is the first of at least two Northern Virginia locations.
Twosome Old Town LLC was formed in Delaware on Sept. 24, 2025, and qualified to do business in Virginia on March 17, according to the State Corporation Commission. Its principal office is listed at 400 King St., in the ground-floor retail of The Alexandrian hotel. Two weeks earlier, on March 16, the company formed Twosome Ballston LLC, which qualified in Virginia on April 1 and lists a principal office at 4300 Wilson Blvd. in Arlington.
Both are held beneath Twosome Cafe Holdings LLC, an Arlington-registered entity, and Twosome Place USA, Inc., a Virginia stock corporation whose principal office is the company's headquarters on Eulji-ro in Seoul's Jung-gu district. All four share the same registered agent. The structure indicates the American stores will be company-owned and run from Korea rather than franchised to a local operator.
Neither the company nor the city has publicly confirmed that King Street is the chain's first U.S. location.
What the permits show
Alexandria Living Magazine first reported the storefront last week, citing city permit records that identify the space as "Twosome Place" and classify it as a bakery and café.
A commercial building alteration permit issued June 23 covers a new tenant layout across 2,689 square feet, with construction valued at $270,000. The permit was applied for April 6 and runs through January 2027. SYN Architecture + Engineering, a Fairfax firm whose portfolio includes several Korean food-and-beverage projects in Northern Virginia, is listed as the applicant, with MLU Corporation as general contractor. The property owner is the entity behind The Alexandrian.
The city issued an administrative encroachment permit July 15 for outdoor dining on the sidewalk in front of the space, and the Board of Architectural Review signed off in May on changes to the storefront window system.
Hiring points to a rollout
The company has been recruiting in Alexandria. A listing for an assistant café manager describes the brand as launching and expanding operations in the United States and says the role will help establish a foundation for its U.S. teams. Among the preferred qualifications: experience supporting multi-unit and multi-state operations.
The job structure — a café manager above the role, floor supervisors below it, separate front and back of house — suggests a full patisserie operation rather than a counter service coffee shop.
The chain's chief executive, Moon Young-ju, said publicly in April, in the company's annual earnings announcement, that Twosome planned to open its first U.S. store this year and to bring the New York ice cream brand Van Leeuwen to Korea.
The Ballston address
The Arlington entity's listed address, 4300 Wilson Blvd., is the site of a Compass Coffee location the D.C.-based chain moved to give up.
Compass filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Jan. 6 and asked the court to let it reject 10 leases, including 4300 Wilson Blvd., as soon as Jan. 30. Twosome formed its Ballston entity roughly six weeks later.
The Alexandria Brief could not confirm whether Twosome has leased that specific space, and Compass has not said publicly when the location will close.
If it proceeds, the Ballston store would open into a crowded market. Compass's other Ballston café is two blocks east at 4100 Wilson Blvd. Ballston Quarter, three blocks away, houses Tous les Jours — the Korean bakery-café brand owned by CJ Foodville, the company that founded A Twosome Place in 2002 and spun it off as an independent corporation in 2018.
Who owns it
Twosome has been owned since November 2021 by the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based private equity firm headquartered at 1001 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, about eight miles from King Street. Carlyle bought the chain from Anchor Equity Partners in a deal Korean financial press valued at roughly 800 billion to 1 trillion won.
In December, Twosome acquired KFC Korea for about 250 billion won. Korean business publications described that purchase as a move to build scale and earnings ahead of a possible sale of Twosome itself. Carlyle has not announced a sale process.
The company registered its U.S. trademarks well ahead of the expansion, securing "A Twosome Place Coffee & Dessert" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in June 2020 and filing a standalone "Twosome" mark the same year.
Three storefronts, one block
Twosome would be the third food-and-beverage tenant to fill the ground-floor retail along that stretch of King Street in roughly three months.
Life Alive Organic Cafe, the plant-based chain from Lowell, Massachusetts, opened at 402 King St. on June 9 in about 3,250 square feet. Van Leeuwen Ice Cream opened nine days later.
The Van Leeuwen adjacency is not incidental. In February, Van Leeuwen signed a master franchise agreement making Twosome the operator that brings the New York brand to South Korea. The first Korean store opened near Seoul's Gangnam Station in early July. The two companies are business partners in one market and, if the King Street plans hold, will be neighbors in another.
What the chain sells
Twosome opened its first store in Seoul's Sinchon neighborhood in 2002 and has grown to roughly 1,700 locations. It began franchising in 2008 and withdrew from China in 2022 after several years of weak sales.
The brand is built on pairing coffee with dessert, and its reputation at home rests on whole cakes. Its best-known product is a spoonable icebox cake introduced in 2015; a strawberry-and-chocolate fresh cream cake anchors its year-end marketing. Mascarpone tiramisu, New York cheesecake, macarons and a savory line of sandwiches and salads round out the menu.
No U.S. menu has been released, and there is no public indication how closely an American store would follow the Korean lineup.
Still unresolved
The name on the storefront is not settled in the public record. City permits say "Twosome Place." The company's registered U.S. trademark reads "A Twosome Place Coffee & Dessert." In Korea, the brand dropped the leading "A" from its marketing this year.
No opening date has been announced. The sidewalk encroachment permit carries a Sept. 30 expiration, and final inspections had not been completed as of this week.
