Berlin, July 7th, 2026 (The Berlin Spectator) – One of Berlin’s most storied cafés is preparing for its next act. Café Kranzler, the landmark coffeehouse at the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimsthaler Strasse, is expected to reopen this fall after a two-year-break. But longtime regulars may be in for a surprise when they see what’s on the menu.
According to the “Tagesspiegel” daily, the incoming tenant is the Big Mamma Group, a Paris-founded restaurant company specializing in Italian cuisine. Rather than continuing the Viennese-style coffeehouse tradition Café Kranzler has been known for since 1825, the group is expected to bring its Italian concept to the site. Big Mamma already operates 37 restaurants across ten countries, including two in Berlin: Coccodrillo near Weinbergspark and Pamela at Gendarmenmarkt, which opened this year. In Germany, the company operates under the name Big Square.
The Kranzler Eck’s marketing association has so far declined to name the new operator publicly, describing it only as an “international, innovative hospitality company” that intends to continue the café’s history, according to the German-language newspaper report mentioned above. Renovation work is underway at the site, though nothing of the new interior design has been made visible yet, and it remains unclear how much of the café’s traditional Austrian pastry offerings, including its famous Sacher Torte, will survive the transition.
First Stop
Café Kranzler traces its history back to 1825, when Vienna-trained pastry chef Johann Georg Kranzler opened a modest confectionery at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden in what is now central Berlin. The business expanded over the following decades and became known for a street terrace — a novelty at the time — that survived repeated attempts by municipal building authorities to remove it, reportedly thanks to royal protection.
The Kurfürstendamm branch, in the western part of the city, opened in 1932. It was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in the 1950s. The version still standing today, with its distinctive rotunda and red-and-white striped awning, dates to 1957–58. After West Berlin’s postwar division, the café became a symbol of the city’s western half and one of the first stops many East Berliners made after the Wall fell in November 1989.
The café closed in 2000, and the surrounding complex, known as the Neues Kranzler Eck, was redeveloped by architect Helmut Jahn. Later tenants included British fashion retailer Superdry and, since 2016, the Berlin coffee roaster The Barn.
Broader redevelopment
The café’s return is part of a broader redevelopment of the Kranzler Eck complex, according to the “Tagesspiegel” reported”. The courtyard, once home to two large aviaries housing more than 100 birds until 2025, is being redesigned as a green space for events accommodating up to 300 people. The last of the parakeets have been relocated to a bird sanctuary in Hesse. Plans for the site reportedly include space for corporate events, product launches, fitness classes, art and dance courses, and flea markets.
At the front of the building, guests will once again be able to sit both beneath the café’s traditional red-and-white awnings at street level and on a balcony above — not only in the long-vacant rotunda upstairs. The rooftop of the older building section is also set to be transformed into a green retreat with perennials, grasses and herbs by the fourth quarter of this year.
Elsewhere in the complex, uncertainty remains over the building on the Kant Strasse side, formerly home to a Bilka and later Karstadt Sports department store, which closed in 2020. Its owner, the insurance group Axa, has announced plans for a “multifunctional culture and event center,” reportedly with a long-term lease already signed by a prominent Berlin cultural institution, though further details have not been disclosed. Drugstore chain Rossmann is expected to open a branch nearby along Joachimsthaler Strasse this fall, and PayPal’s German headquarters recently relocated to the high-rise office tower on the Ku’damm that is part of the same development.
