Houndstooth Coffee

Houndstooth Coffee opened its first café in Central Austin in May 2010, where “The pattern of coffee and people” was first written on the wall as an aspiration and became the company’s slogan. The founders came out of Medici, and the name borrows from the Scottish plaid that once marked a region’s people, the idea being that a coffee shop is a regional identity too. The original room was designed around a low-slung espresso machine, with the barista placed in the centre so guests can watch the craft. Baristas are trained by “nationally recognized industry professionals”, and Imbibe named Sean and Paul Henry of Houndstooth its 2019 Coffee People of the Year.

Its partner roaster is Tweed Coffee in Dallas, and the cafés run a coffee bag recycling programme that takes any retail bag. Tweed roasts on a 35 kilogram Loring, rotates its coffees with the seasons, buys through importers and exporters it has worked with for years, the same coffees from the same producers where it can, and roasts “for terroir, not for a light or dark roast character”. Its blends are Timepiece and Vixen for espresso, Foxtrot for brewed coffee and the Two Step decaf, with single origins from Colombia, Peru, Ethiopia and Burundi.

There are five cafés in Austin. Frost Downtown, the second, is downtown and fills during South by Southwest. East MLK adds beer, wine and craft cocktails, Rock Rose at Domain Northside pours beer, wine, classic cocktails and specialty coffee cocktails and can be hired, and Laurel, the newest, is near the Colorado River in East Austin with a large outdoor area and parking. Three more cafés, North Henderson, Sylvan Thirty and Walnut Hill, are in Dallas, and Jettison, a hidden, reservation-only cocktail den, is the sister lounge. Houndstooth also caters with an espresso cart and consults on café design, training and tasting education.

Photograph: Houndstooth Coffee