Despite a neighborhood filled with dining options, Chicago’s popular River North neighborhood, nationally recognized for its versatile food selection will soon house its only neighborhood coffee shop. Robust Coffee Lounge, which successfully opened its first shop in 2010 on the southside of Chicago is expanding its operations to 416. W. Ontario this coming February.

Robust Coffee Lounge will soon offer exquisite coffee drinks and home-made menu items as well as serving a plethora of foodstuffs in collaboration with Chicago's greatest food artisans. They will also be providing their catering services to the downtown area.

Keeping with their mission, Robust will continue to partner with some of the best local bakers and foodstuffs artisans including Brown Sugar Bakery, Hoosier Mama Pie's, and The Spice House.

Robust Coffee Lounge has been seen on The Food Network, The OWN Network, The Steve Harvey Show and has been recognized as one of Chicago's 15 best coffee shops in Time-Out Magazine. During its tenure, Robust has been recognized for its coffee and food menu as well as its community awareness and participation in curbing youth violence. That type of community intimacy has become a staple for owners Derek Cortelyou and Jake Sapstein and their coffee lounge.

"This is a fortunate opportunity in which we happen to come across when we were looking to open a second location. Once we realized the place was available, we took a look at it and saw that the ambiance really fell in place with how we wanted to present our shop to the community--We want to be that neighborhood shop," said Sapstein.