Creature Coffee Offers Creature Comforts at Cozy Austin Cafe

The Native Hostel building at 807 E. 4th St. just east of I-35 in East Austin. All images courtesy of Creature Coffee.

The online multiroaster coffee subscription model followed the real-life trend of physical cafes offering beans from multiple roasters.

In an interesting reversal of that trend, the Austin, Texas-based multiroaster subscription company Creature Coffee has expanded from ones and zeroes into bricks and mortar. The company is now serving customers face-to-face inside the Native Hostel in East Austin, showcasing coffees from a variety of Texas roasters.

Currently, the company is featuring five different coffees from two roasters on its bar. Ground by a Nuova Simonelli Mythos grinder and extracted on a two-group La Marzocco Linea, the house espresso is Austin-based Flat Track Coffee‘s Dogspeed blend, alongside which a washed Ethiopian coffee roasted by Edison Coffee out of Flower Mound, Texas, is also featured. Creature’s house drip is a blend of beans from Peru and Colombia, and its Kalita Wave pourover bar provides three single-origin coffee options.

Seasonality is also key to the bar’s creative Barista Special drinks, which incorporate fresh ingredients. One example is the ruby red grapefruit shandy made with a natural-process Ethiopian-based nitro iced coffee and grapefruit juice. The shop also takes seriously its in-house approach to syrups including mocha, vanilla, honey and lavender.

Roasters will rotate in and out every three months, offering locals and hostel guests the opportunity to taste some of the best coffee being roasted in Texas from the cafe space inside the 120-year-old building, which has been completely remodeled.

“There are now over 20 roasters on our subscription and people really enjoy discovering new ones,” Creature Coffee Founder Michael Craig told Daily Coffee News. “Guests at the hostel love to take home beans roasted in Austin.”

Craig said that while a series of retail pop-ups prior to opening the shop helped build support from local cafe-goers, the permanent physical location for Creature Coffee has also been a draw for its existing brand loyalists online.

“It’s a really great experience to meet long-term subscribers, Texas coffee enthusiasts and put a face to the names,” said Craig. “We love introducing people to specialty coffee and to see people’s love for Texas coffee inspires us. We’ve had many home brewing conversations and hope to host home brewing classes in the future.”

Creature Coffee is now open inside the Native Hostel at 807 E. 4th St. in Austin.