Giacomo Campus is a real estate salesman and tennis pro from Milan. For his next venture, he will bring a little bit of home to the District Midtown Apartment complex along the Haywood Road corridor.
Sole Espresso Bar will open April 25, bringing with it coffee imported from Italy and an array of items native to Campus’ homeland. The TV screen adjacent to the bar itself is likely to be playing Italian television all day.
Campus is opening the bar with his wife, Hannah Hopkins. Hopkins had a background in restaurants having previously worked at Ristorante Bergamo.
“Everything we do is the Italian way,” Campus said. “We wanted to offer that to the community here.”
The objective is to create a coffee shop experience that feels authentically Italian.
Italian flavors in Greenville at Sole Espresso Bar
Along the bar and on its retail shelves is Italy’s Bistrot Coffee. Throughout are items like MoleCola — Italy’s version of Coke — as well as sugar and napkins from Italy. The coffee shop collaborates with Le Petit Croissant for its pastries, which Campus admires for its European style of baking.
The business started as a coffee cart popping up around town before Campus and Hopkins acquired the District Midtown space in October. The mobile coffee bar started about a year ago.
Although Campus’ family still resides in Italy, he has been in the U.S. for about a decade. Tennis brought him here and eventually led him to Hopkins. The pair played college tennis at Limestone University.
“My family is all in Italy so they’re coming hopefully soon to check it out,” Campus said. “My mom has been here once when I graduated college but the rest of my family, they’ve never been in the U.S. I kind of did this for them, too.”
Sole Espresso Bar opens April 25 at 9 a.m. It will be open Tuesday through Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
