Juliana Luna’s Latest Chapter Finds Her Behind the Scenes of a Coffee Powerhouse

On May 30, when Night Swim Coffee celebrates the grand opening of its seventh location inside the new Queensbridge Collective on South Tryon Street, it will mark a new beginning for patrons.

Yet for the team at Night Swim, the celebration marks the end of a long planning process that included working with developers over many months to ensure the new location could live up to their high standards.

Working behind the scenes alongside Night Swim’s owners has been Juliana Luna, VP of operations at Black Rock Hospitality Group, which comprises Night Swim, Undercurrent Coffee, and Not Just Coffee.

“In the last two years, we have refined the steps to open a shop and who is in charge of what,” said Luna. “I’m involved from the get-go when the negotiation starts with the company, with the property management or with the lease office, whatever it is.”

In the case of the new Queensbridge Collective development, Luna worked with her colleagues before construction even began inside the space to ensure every piece of equipment that needed to be installed would have the right amount of space, a power source, and any other details that might go unnoticed.

From there, Black Rock owners Miracle and James Yoder and Erin and Todd Huber work with regional directors, the food director, the director of operations, and all 150 team members who have some role in getting everything in place.

Night Swim Coffee launched in 2021 as a partnership between the established Undercurrent and Not Just Coffee brands, and with 16 locations currently operating between them in Charlotte, opening a new space has the team working like a well-oiled machine (or a top-notch commercial coffee machine).

With the May 30 grand opening approaching and two more Night Swim locations scheduled to open later this year, Luna is already looking ahead to new projects that will go beyond opening new spaces.

That includes the launch of a coffee truck to serve Charlotteans where they are and implementing beer and wine programs at certain existing locations so they can stay open later.

There are also plans in the works to begin offering workshops on brewing techniques and other similar lessons for customers.

“That’s the kind of creativity that we are trying to bring,” she said.

It’s been a new experience for Luna to work behind the scenes. She was once known as the founder of Luna’s Living Kitchen, an organic, plant-based restaurant that she ran from its opening in 2011 to 2018, when she stepped away to focus on family and pursue other career paths.

The Colombian immigrant sees her role now as a full-circle moment, reconnecting her past, having grown up in the third-largest coffee producing country in the world.

“I always wanted to have a coffee place,” she told Queen City Nerve during a recent interview at Not Just Coffee in Eastover. “We are drinking coffee in Colombia since we are 10, maybe 5 [years old]. We behave around coffee. You always have a break. You have your morning coffee, then you have another break for coffee at 11, and then in the afternoon you break again for coffee. It’s a part of the culture.”

Since joining the Black Rock Hospitality team in 2021, Luna has made herself part of the coffee culture in Charlotte, drawing on the steadfast work ethic she learned in Switzerland and the mentorship of others in Charlotte she has crossed paths with during her remarkable journey.

Learning the ropes in Switzerland

At age 23, Luna wasn’t sure yet what career she wanted to pursue. Coming up in a family that always centered home cooking, she wanted to pursue the culinary arts but her father pleaded with her to reconsider.

“My dad is a spreadsheet guy, but I just wanted to cook. Give me an onion and a cutting board,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Juli, we will help you to be a chef, but please study the business. Other than that, you are not going to know what you are doing. You need to understand the business of numbers.’ I always fought that. I didn’t care about the numbers.”

When she learned of a scholarship opportunity to study hospitality at the César Ritz Colleges in Switzerland, she applied, knowing it was a perfect chance to engage with food while addressing her father’s concerns with the business end of things.

As one of just a few women studying at the school and not yet strong in the English language, she thinks back on her time there as one of the most stressful of her life.

“I would say that was my military career because I cried so many times,” she said.

Nevertheless, she earned her degree after three years and looks back fondly on the lessons she took with her.

“I remember with this Austrian chef that I was just like, ‘I’m gonna die here’ because he is so perfectionist that it was just just driving me crazy. But what I don’t understand [then], that kind of work ethic and that mentoring is where I start to kind of build myself as an operator in general.”

Recruited by Hilton Hotels to work in America, Luna chose Charlotte over Maryland and Miami because some of her family members had previously passed through the city to learn English here and thought she would like it for its many trees and small-town feel.

While working on a two-year visa, she met the man who would later become her husband. He worked in gyms and elsewhere in the wellness industry as an expert in vitamin supplements and smoothies.

During that time, Luna began experimenting with raw foods, becoming interested in the aesthetic more than the diet aspect of the growing trend.

“What people were doing, the science behind it, was beautiful,” she said. “Cheesecakes with macadamia nuts and extracting the juice of a carrot to make a pumpkin pie. I was like, ‘Whoa, what is this?’ It’s just fruits and vegetables. It was crazy.”

She began making meals for friends and family, pairing them with her husband’s smoothies. When her visa expired, the two married and opened Luna’s Living Kitchen in a 600-foot space where TEA ReX Teahouse had closed in 2009 in South End.

Their initial investment was just $7,000, according to Luna.

“We ended up writing this [business plan] and then we say, ‘Okay, let’s start.’ We didn’t need a hood, we didn’t need a range, we didn’t need anything. At that point the regulation is almost nonexistent because you’re not cooking, we are just blending.”

Hitting a wall at Luna’s Living Kitchen

The restaurant became a staple and a pioneer in a culinary field that had not yet blossomed in Charlotte. However, after new locations in Raleigh and Chapel Hill failed to find a fanbase, Luna made the decision to step away.

“We wrote 200 recipes on this journey and the production was so big, I was like, ‘I want to take a break.’ I didn’t want to be a creator anymore,” she said. “Sometimes you want to sit down and say, ‘Please tell me what you want from me.’ I can cook as much as you want, however you want it, but I don’t want to write at all. I want to be silent. I felt motherhood [calling me]. So that was kind of the switch at that point.”

Luna initially took a job running catering for Showmars but quickly decided it wasn’t for her. A longtime friend of FS Food Group founder Frank Scibelli, she joined his team as an assistant manager at Yafo Kitchen’s East Boulevard location.

She found her spark again at Yafo, learning under Chef Carmen Vasquez, though she remained protective of her family time.

“I didn’t want to take any management position at that point,” she said. “I had a 2-year-old. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be the last call. If the dishwasher breaks, I will help you, I will solve it, but I don’t want to be the last one washing dishes. I need to go home.’”

Read more: Chef Carmen Vasquez Traces Her 25-Year Journey with FS Food Group (2025)

Luna said she learned a lot with FS Food Group, helping formulate the plan for Calle Sol Latin Café & Cevicheria before her friends at Undercurrent and Not Just Coffee approached her about helping merge the two businesses to make Night Swim.

Luna said she was attracted to the way the Black Rock team centered sustainability and fresh ingredients.

“Everything is from scratch — syrups from raw materials, we are making breads, we’re making loaves, everything,” she said. “We are handmakers of something.”

During her four years with the company, Luna has helped consolidate the three brands so that employees working in an Undercurrent Coffee shop can easily transition to Not Just Coffee or Night Swim.

Read more: Undercurrent and Not Just Coffee Merge To Make Night Swim Coffee (2021)

She compared it to businesses that spoke three different languages, so she made it her mission to get them all speaking one tongue.

“The bar flow may change, the location may change, but the skeleton is the same now,” she said.

The new owners of Living Kitchen closed the flagship location in Atherton Mill in 2024. Luna says she sometimes misses running her own restaurant, mostly because so many of her fans and regulars lost touch with her once she stepped away.

“They don’t know where to find me,” she says as we wrap up our discussion. “I hope this [story] can show them where to find me.”

What’s clear in the meantime, however, is that she’s found a new family in Black Rock Hospitality Group.

Night Swim Coffee at Queensbridge Collective is located at 1111 S. Tryon St. After its grand opening on May 30, it will be open Monday-Friday from 7 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit the website or follow @nightswimcoffee on Instagram for more info.