A figure 8 is a classic ice-skating manoeuvre: hard to do, and effortless to watch once mastered. The Italians call that quality sprezzatura, and Figure 8 Coffee Purveyors takes it as a picture of the barista’s job, making a difficult shot of espresso or a cappuccino look easy. The café and roastery opened in East Austin in 2014, and a second café followed. Either sells the full current inventory of roasted coffee.

The coffee is roasted at the original café. The Supergroup Blend puts Brazil’s Rio Brilhante under a natural Ethiopian and a Veracruz-grown Mexican coffee, with cherry cola, caramel, cashew and berry in the roaster’s notes, and the comparison the roaster reaches for is the 1995 to 1998 Chicago Bulls. The single origins change: a honey-process lot from Mexico grown by the fourth-generation APG family in Coatepec, Veracruz, and bought through the importer Falcon Coffees, an anaerobic natural from Norman Mukuru’s station on Mount Elgon in Uganda, a double-fermented Ethiopian from Banko Taratu in Yirgacheffe and a community lot from Jaén in Cajamarca, Peru. The decaf is a sugarcane-process Colombian from Valle del Cauca.

Figure 8 also sells its coffee in cans, as black coffee and as lightly sweetened oat-milk lattes made with a Colombian from Tolima, and runs a Roaster’s Choice subscription. The wholesale side, which the company calls “8th wave coffee”, supplies cafés, restaurants and offices with staff training and equipment help. The pocket tees are designed by the Austin artist Cherry Panther.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Figure 8 Coffee Purveyors