Texas Coffee Traders began with a terrible cup of coffee. RC Beall drank it in an all-night diner in Montana, wondered whether roasting a better one could be a living, found an old roaster and five bags of green beans in a wood cabin, and started Montana Coffee Traders, which by 1989 was supplying the whole of Glacier National Park. In 1990 he travelled to Monteverde, Costa Rica, met Carlos Vargas of the Santa Elena co-op, roasted the farmers’ own coffee for them on the small hot-air roaster he carried, and offered to buy their green coffee at a far higher price with a dollar a pound returned to the farm. The company counts it as one of the first fair-trade relationships in the United States, and the friendship outlasted the deal.

RC came home to Texas in the early 1990s to marry his childhood friend Beth, and together they opened Texas Coffee Traders in 1994. “Austin’s Original Eastside Roastery” supplies restaurants, cafés and home drinkers across Central Texas, and the range is long: single origins, blends, decafs, cans, pods and loose-leaf teas, with brewing equipment and home espresso machines alongside.

After nearly thirty years in one East Austin building, the business moved in 2024 to three sites in the same part of town. The TCT Cafe & Retail shop serves espresso drinks, drip coffee and pastries and sells beans, tea and merchandise. The warehouse and roastery holds the full catalogue of roasted coffee and bar supplies, with walk-ins welcome and online orders for collection. The third site is Coffee Techs, the equipment installation and repair arm, which works by appointment.

Coffee on the shelf

Photograph: Texas Coffee Traders