Introducing Tenfold Coffee

Houston coffee expert brews new cafe and roastery in hip Heights district

Tenfold Coffee will occupy a metal building behind Johnny's Gold Brick.

Courtesy of Braun Enterprises

For some people, drinking coffee is a daily habit — as long as it’s hot and delivers a sufficient caffeine hit, they’re happy. Other may go a step beyond by grinding their beans fresh every morning or buying a certain drink from the same shop every morning.

True coffee disciples obsess over every detail. They make it their career. Not just by becoming a barista, but by learning how to roast raw coffee beans and traveling around the world to source the best ingredients.

Jacob Ibarra is one such coffee disciple. The native Houstonian and Texas A&M graduate (aka, former student) has devoted his life to teaching others how to brew the perfect cup.

That’s why he’s working towards opening a new cafe and roastery in the Heights. Located in the Braun Enterprises development at 2522 Yale St. (behind Johnny’s Gold Brick), Tenfold Coffee aims to foster education for both the people who make coffee and the people who drink it. In addition to serving coffee and food, patrons will be able to watch the roasting process take place within the building when it opens next summer.

Few people are more qualified to start such a company than Ibarra. After working as a barista in college, he moved to Costa Rica, where he became fascinated by the country’s obsession with coffee.

“You were just surrounded by coffee,” Ibarra tells CultureMap. “There’s coffee in the morning. Every worker stops at 10:30 am for a coffee break. There’s another coffee break at lunchtime. There’s another at 3 pm. At home, there’s another coffee. You’re constantly consuming it.”

From there, he moved to Seattle, where he rose through the ranks of Caffe Vita’s roasting operation. Eventually, he became responsible for training coffee shops on the best brewing practices.

On a coffee buying trip in Colombia, he met Australians who recruited him to Melbourne. While Seattle might be the most coffee-obsessed city in America, Melbourne surpasses it.

“You’re talking about a city of four million, whereas Seattle is a million and a bit,” Ibarra says. “This is a massive city, just crazy about coffee culture . . . It’s a big part of the restaurant scene.”

Working at a high level in two very competitive markets has Ibarra convinced that Houston has room for more coffee shops and coffee roasters. Just as the city supports an ever-growing number of craft beer breweries, Ibarra thinks Houston will support more than the half dozen or so prominent local roasters. He also has a plan to distinguish Tenfold from other coffee shops — and not just by making the roasting process visible to patrons.

“We’re really focused on the educational aim of it all. That’s my background,” Ibarra says. “In the Australian market, that’s how we distinguished ourselves. In this space, we’ll have a lab . . . When a customer purchases our coffee, they can bring their whole staff, and my trainer can go through the basics with them.”

In addition to teaching people more about how coffee is roasted and brewed, Ibarra wants to support farmers in developing countries. He currently works in a sales role for the Long Miles Coffee Project and wants Tenfold to help further that company’s goal of providing a viable living for farmers in Burundi.

"I’ve spent the majority of the last 10 years procuring coffee, visiting farms, going around the globe," Ibarra says. "Instead of my offering being really wide with 10 or 15 countries, we’ll go with three or four to start off with and hopefully go deeper within each country."

For consumers who just want a good cup of coffee and a bite to eat, Tenfold will offer a full range of espresso beverages, including the option of alternative milks. Beer and wine will be available in the evenings. Ibarra’s experiences in Australia helped shape his plan for the cafe’s food.

“We’ll have some toast. I’m thinking about sourdough waffles with different toppings. Stuff for people to snack on, like a cheese plate. I still want it to pair with coffee,” he says. “It’s still early days for that. I’ve got a lot of ideas.”

coffee the-heights openings

Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

crime interview