David Benjamin and Ricky Bravo opened Weekday Coffee & Matcha at the University of Central Florida on Aug. 24, taking over the former Starbucks location on UCF’s Memory Mall. The shop opened on the first day of fall classes, giving students and visitors a new place to stop on a busy part of campus.
The shop serves handcrafted drinks, baked goods and house-made syrups. Benjamin graduated from UCF in 2021 with a degree in integrated business, while Bravo graduated in 2017 with a degree in sport and exercise science.
Memory Mall at UCF
Benjamin said the location carried personal weight because he had spent years there as a student. “I’ve walked up and down Memory Mall for years,” he said. “I would hammock there all the time and play spike ball with my friends.” He added, “So every part of this just feels like home in a sense.”
That sense of familiarity runs through the way the business came together. Benjamin and Bravo became roommates during college in Summer 2016, then kept building their connection after graduation. Benjamin worked at Robinhood and later spent four years as an IT project manager at UCF. Bravo started at DUO58 as a volunteer dishwasher, became director of training, trained with the Specialty Coffee Association in California, and later worked at Lineage Coffee Roasting before returning to Robinhood during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Benjamin and Bravo
Benjamin said the pair spent time exploring coffee shops together in Orlando and developed a close working friendship. “We went everywhere together and had a ton of fun,” he said. “We grew a pretty close friendship.”
The move from a kiosk idea to a full-service shop shows how the project expanded beyond a small-space plan. Instead of a limited counter setup, Weekday Coffee & Matcha opened as a broader campus stop with drinks, food and syrups, replacing an old Starbucks space with a new alumni-run operation at a high-traffic location.
Orlando ranked No. 1 on WalletHub’s 2026 list of America’s best coffee cities, a background detail that fits the shop’s pitch to bring specialty coffee culture to campus. What the shop expects from students and campus traffic next is not laid out, leaving the opening itself as the clearest marker of where the business begins.
