#231: Jo's Coffee

The Bar

Jo's Coffee. 221 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/24/2026 @ 11:30am.

The Drink

Four Corners El Chingón. $6.

There's a funny beer selection here, as despite Jo's being a proudly Austin chain, basically every beer they had was from Four Corners, an equally proudly Dallas brewery. When I posed my question about the drink that best represents the bar, the staff collectively vacillated between this and the Local Buzz, their honey blonde, before eventually choosing the IPA. I was glad they did, as El Chingón (a cheerfully affectionate vulgar Spanish term meaning something like "the badass") is an excellent IPA, one of the few which can rival my beloved 512 IPA in terms of smoothness (72 IBU vs 512's 60) and quiet strength (at 7.3% ABV, it actually bests 512's 7.0%). I wasn't trying to get hammered in a bank lobby at 11:30am, but if I had been, this would have been a really pleasant way to do it, as there was some very nice seating with a good street view right behind the Jo's counter that I had all to myself. $6 a can isn't a particularly great bargain, but again: this is in a bank lobby.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Jo's is a local mini-chain of coffee shops with an interesting position in the Austin cultural landscape. The flagship location on South Congress is internationally known for its iconic "I love you so much" wall mural, beloved of locals and tourists alike, but which has become more well-known than the coffee shop itself, which is kind of like if everyone only knew the NYC restaurant featured in When Harry Met Sally as the "I'll have what she's having" deli. Still, there are obviously worse problems to have than featuring world-renowned iconography on your building, and the chain has done fairly well for itself since its founding in 2010, having recently expanded to double-digit locations in multiple states thanks to its current status as a recently acquired member of the Hyatt hotel empire. 

Now, it's always potentially dangerous when a much-loved scrappy local joint scales up quickly - Alamo Drafthouse, Kerbey Lane, Torchy's, and Vert's are only some of the Austin-specific cautionary examples I could cite - but I feel like the coffee shop business model, particularly of the grab-and-go variety, has fewer inherent scaling problems than a restaurant, being more dependent on the location for its ambience. This Jo's outpost is located in the lobby of the freshly remodeled Chase Bank Tower, which was recently officially renamed to the Procore Tower but in a Sears Tower-like fit of stubbornness will probably retain its older name forever, especially among those old enough to remember when it was gold, like me. I had to go here during lunchtime since they close up at 5pm, which isn't great from an alcohol sales perspective but is just fine for a coffee shop that is focused on its core competency. Amusingly, the Jo's location nearest my house at Manchaca/Stassney can't sell alcohol at all since it is just barely within the TABC-mandated 300 foot radius of Crockett High School, but that just goes to show that booze isn't necessarily a big part of the Jo's business model, which is fair enough.