BY MEG VAN HUYGEN for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 9/4/2026
On the morning of Friday, August 21, a few sandwich boards suddenly sprouted up on the east side of South Tacoma Way near South 56th Street. Anaïs Coffee, they explained via arrows, is thataway.
In the walk-up bar area inside Edison Square, this little cafe is the new daytime inhabitant, bringing a spacious kid-friendly vibe to the quickly developing South Tacoma neighborhood. And also coffee. During nighttime shows at Edison Square, the counter will revert to bar service, and as such, the coffee shop operates alongside the bar coolers and beer taps. But by day, Anaïs is serving beans from its new neighbor, Bluebeard Coffee, along with baked goods, energy drinks, matcha, and other teas.
The beverage list includes all the usual espresso-based suspects along with a flat white, the creamier Australian cousin of the cafe latte, as well as some fancy signature permutations, like the Golden Hour, made with espresso, vanilla syrup, honey, cinnamon, and oat milk.
Married co-owners Kaja and Jay Yazzie started Anaïs Coffee in 2025, but it took a minute to find the perfect spot. “We’ve been doing a lot of coffee practicing,” Jay said, “and last year, we started this whole venture of trying to find a location. When we started this journey, all we knew was that it was going to be Tacoma, but we didn’t know where in Tacoma.”
The Yazzies were both born and raised in the Tacoma area, and they share a professional background in real estate. Kaja is also a skilled baker, and she’ll be providing baked goods for the cafe. Anaïs Coffee will operate as a cashless business, accepting tap, card, and mobile-phone payments only. The café’s name is pronounced “ah-nahEES,” and it’s a French/Catalan diminutive of Anne (and also Kaja’s middle name).
This is a great time to mention that first-timers at Anaïs Coffee get one of Kaja’s chocolate chip/sea salt cookies on the house, and I must say, it’s a killer. I like to claim that I’m not really a sweets person, and I’d just eaten breakfast on the day I rolled up, no less, but dang. I made very short work of this cookie.
“So, I plan to expand on the cookie offerings I have,” Kaja said. “I actually was just making some s’mores cookie dough this morning! We want to do a few more varieties, and then as time and space allows, I would love to do things like make some mini-muffins that are geared toward kids. I do have a few other seasonal things that I do too, like a scone and a pumpkin roll.”
“But really,” she laughed, “cookies are my primary focus. It’s gonna be a lot of different varieties of cookie flavors!” Speaking of kids, the central concept behind Anaïs hinges upon its family-friendly format, so finding a big, roomy space was crucial for the Yazzies. When news went around that another coffee spot was going in on this block, some eyebrows were raised, since Bluebeard Coffee seems to be the de rigueur neighborhood cafe and it’s exactly across the street. Some might think it’s a shot across Bluebeard’s bow. But, Jay pointed out, Bluebeard STW has developed a rep as a quiet haven for WFH laptoppers (my ears were burning) and less so for families with small children. Despite selling the same coffee, Bluebeard and Anaïs are very different concepts spiritually.
That said, Edison Square is a venue, a huge, cavernous theater with a concessions strip along one wall, so at first glance, the aesthetic doesn’t necessarily lend itself to cozying up and camping out with the fam for a while. But look closer. There are vintage couches in the space now, along with additional tables and a stack of children’s books. There’s also a cool loft space that can be reserved for larger parties. When it’s not hosting comedy shows or karaoke competitions, the high-ceilinged hall, originally opened in 1919 as the neighborhood’s first movie theater, is being styled as a giant living room.
“We had a lot of meetings about this project at many other coffee shops,” Jay said, “and we found out that when you bring your kids with you, they can only sit still for so long. And you can bring toys, but it’s their own toys, and they get bored of them. So having somewhere soft for them to play, like this little kids’ area we created, having some soft toys for them to come and hang out, and then just see the kids will play with each other, sometimes kids who don’t even know each other; they just pick up and play. It’s heartwarming, you know?”
They’ve also got an ethos around quality and not serving junk food. “What we’re trying to do is make sure that we get high-quality ingredients for the same price that you’re already paying for another cup of coffee. Or, for kids, a non-coffee beverage. Because we want people to feel comfortable eating and drinking here, so we’re trying to choose the right syrups and the right ingredients for our menu, to make sure that it’s healthy, unprocessed stuff.”
Anaïs is still finding its footing, the Yazzies said (and understandably), but the cafe has already got some upcoming events to be stoked about. On September 19, they’ll be hosting Silent Book Club: a period of silent reading, followed by a social hour among book lovers, which will feature a pop-up bookstore. (“Like, there’s definitely a lot of chatting,” Kaja admitted. “I think that they call it a silent book club because it’s like ‘bring your own book, read it, then chat, discuss, hang out.’”) And on Friday, September 4, Anaïs Coffee will be a main character in the STW First Friday community event, an all-day street festival that spotlights locally owned businesses. The pair are also scheming on coming up with some kid-oriented events in the Anaïs space.
But whether their guests bring kids or no kids, the couple said, the overarching idea behind Anaïs Coffee is just to be welcoming. In fact, because the theater space also serves as overflow for Radnor’s next door, it means that even after Anaïs Coffee closes for the day at 2 p.m., the space is accessible to the community until Radnor’s closes.
“When we were out on STW the other day,” Jay said, “giving coffee samples away, we were letting people know, like, you can come in here and eat your Howdy Bagels. And we won’t bug you to buy something. We want you to come in here, hang out, chat, vibe, do some work, and we figure maybe you’ll come back sometime. You know? This space is for everybody.”
Kaja echoed the sentiment. “I just really love the space we ended up with at Edison [Square], and I’m hoping we can continue including our community within it, putting on some events in the future for different demographics, as we keep on inviting people into our space. Really, as Jay says, we’re just trying to create a space that feels welcoming for the whole community here, from the smallest to the tallest.”
Anaïs Coffee
5415 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma WA 98409 @anaiscoffee
