Specialty coffee and matcha chain Blank Street has secured US$75 million in Series B funding to support its store expansion in the United States' West Coast market.

The round drew participation from private equity firm General Atlantic — owner of Joe & the Juice — alongside Left Lane Capital, General Catalyst, and Tiger Global. The investment follows the company's successful Series A in October 2021, which raised US$25 million to accelerate the brand's expansion across New York City; the two rounds together account for US$100 million in disclosed funding. The fresh capital also arrives amid a broader run of private money into specialty coffee, a category in which Nestlé took a majority stake in Blue Bottle Coffee in 2017 and JAB Holding's portfolio includes Peet's Coffee.

Blank Street now operates more than 100 stores in the US and the United Kingdom (UK) — the latter market it entered with its first London locations in 2022 — and has set its sights on California. According to Co-Founder Issam Freiha, the chain will soon open venues in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Malibu, taking the young chain into the home region of Seattle-headquartered Starbucks, the world's largest coffeehouse company. The new funding is also reported to support the growth of the company's product offering, including ice cream aimed at capturing afternoon sales — a daypart outside the morning rush that typically drives coffee shops' busiest trade.

The company began as a coffee cart in Brooklyn, New York, in 2020, founded by Vinay Menda, Issam Freiha, and Ignacio Llado. The trio say they set out to "reimagine what a coffee shop could be", focusing on simplifying operations to remove "costs that don't benefit customers".

Under this approach, the brand often occupies small locations that require less capital to open than traditional cafés and can fit into dense urban neighbourhoods. The chain also uses automated machinery and standardised processes to reduce complexity, an approach that mirrors wider investment in automation across quick-service food retail, where operators have turned to equipment and standardised workflows to speed service and manage labour costs. With a footprint now above 100 sites, keeping each additional store small and simple to run is central to how the chain scales on less capital per location than a traditional café build-out.