From East 6th To South Austin: The Story Of Our Coffee Bars
Twelve years ago this month, we opened our first standalone Coffee Bar on East 6th Street. This August, we opened our new flagship at The Code—and in a lot of ways, it feels like coming home.
Cuvée had been roasting coffee for more than 15 years before we opened our first coffee bar.
Our first step into retail was actually pretty unconventional. When Salt & Time opened its butcher shop on East 7th Street, we built a small Cuvée coffee bar into one end of their shared bar space.
Specialty coffee inside a craft butcher shop wasn't exactly the obvious pairing in 2013. But it gave us a chance to explore something we'd never really done before: what does Cuvée look and feel like when we're the ones handing you the cup?
We didn't have to wait long to find out.
East 6th
In August 2014, we opened our first standalone Cuvée Coffee Bar on East 6th Street.
For nearly a decade, that little bar became our home in Austin.
It was where a lot of people first experienced Cuvée beyond a bag of coffee. It was where we served Nitro Cold Brew on tap, poured Texas craft beer and wine alongside coffee, and started exploring what a coffee bar could be when it didn't feel the need to behave like a traditional coffee shop.
It was also where some of the stranger chapters in our history happened—including the time the TABC confiscated our Crowler machine and we spent more than a year fighting to get it back.
But more than any of that, East 6th became a neighborhood place.
We knew our regulars. We knew the businesses around us. People stopped in on their way to work, met friends at the bar, grabbed coffee, stayed for a beer, and made Cuvée part of their routines.
Over time, East 6th changed. Austin changed. We changed, too.
A New Kind Of Cuvée
In 2023, we opened our second Austin Coffee Bar inside Natiivo on East Avenue near Rainey Street.
It was different from East 6th from the beginning—and that was intentional.
Natiivo gave us an opportunity to bring Cuvée into a hospitality environment and start thinking beyond the traditional coffee-shop model. Coffee was still at the center, but the setting opened the door to something broader.
Then, in May 2024, our lease on East 6th came up for renewal.
After nearly a decade there, rising rent made staying in the space difficult to justify. We made the hard decision to close it, and for the next two years, Natiivo became our only Austin Coffee Bar.
Cuvée never left Austin.
But we know that for some of you, it probably felt a little like we disappeared.
And we missed having a neighborhood home, too.
Twelve Augusts Later
Which brings us to August 2026.
Exactly twelve years after opening East 6th, we opened our new flagship at The Code on South Lamar.
The Code isn't East 6th 2.0. We don't want it to be.
It's bigger. The beverage program is broader. Coffee anchors the bar, but we built the program around four things we love: coffee, craft beer, wine and cocktails.
In a lot of ways, it represents how Cuvée has evolved.
But there's something about it that feels very familiar.
We're part of a neighborhood again.
The Code sits in a part of South Austin filled with restaurants, bars and independent businesses, with a residential community right outside our door. We want to know the people who live around us. We want to become part of their routines. We want to be the place you walk to for coffee in the morning, meet someone for a drink later, work for a couple of hours, or stop by often enough that eventually we know what you're going to order.
That's what East 6th gave us.
And that's what we're excited to build again.
Same Cuvée. New Neighborhood.
One thing we've learned from Salt & Time, East 6th, Natiivo and now The Code is that we don't want every Cuvée Coffee Bar to look the same.
The spaces are different because the places are different.
What should be recognizable is the experience: great coffee without the intimidation, thoughtful drinks, genuine hospitality, and a place that feels connected to the people around it.
Salt & Time gave us our first chance to find out what a Cuvée coffee bar could be.
East 6th gave us a home.
Natiivo showed us what Cuvée could become inside a larger hospitality experience.
And now The Code brings those pieces together in a new neighborhood and gives us room to keep figuring out what’s next.
Twelve years after we opened East 6th, we’re excited to have a neighborhood to call home again.