cup of jo

Favorite Austin coffee shop brews up first Houston location in the Heights

One of Austin’s favorite coffee shops is opening in the Heights on Friday, February 14. Jo’s Coffee will open its first Houston location at 1023 Studewood Street.

Founded in 1999 by Texas hotel legend Liz Lambert and her brother Lou, the original Jo’s is located next to Austin’s Hotel San Jose. Even those who’ve never had a cup of coffee there will recognize Jo’s often-imititated “I Love You So Much” mural. Bunkhouse Hotels, the hospitality group Lambert founded that’s now part of Hyatt, still operates Jo’s and decided the time was right to bring it to Houston.

“Everyone here at Bunkhouse has absolutely fallen in love with Houston; and considering our growing presence with the opening of Hotel Saint Augustine and then Hotel Daphne later this year, opening up a Jo’s here felt like a natural progression,” Bunkhouse Hotels president Lisa Bonifacio tells CultureMap in an email. “We believe Jo’s will really resonate with Houstonians, especially in Houston Heights, and we are so excited to bring another little taste of Bunkhouse to the city.”

To ensure the Houston location of Jo’s offers the proper Austin vibes, Bunkhouse worked with Austin’s Hip.Hop.Design Studio on the interior design and purchased custom furniture from Austin’s RAD Furniture, which is located near the original Jo’s on South Congress.

Jo’s is best known for its House Blend, a medium roast coffee, and signature drinks such as the draft Iced Turbo, made with coffee, espresso, hazelnut, chocolate, and cream. It also offers wine, craft beer, and frose. Food options include breakfast tacos and locally-baked pastries.

Bunkhouse also wanted to ensure that Houston has an offering that’s unique to its location. Named for a style of house that’s seen through the Heights, the Bungalow is a vanilla latte kicked up with cinnamon and a little cayenne.

“Celebrating the locals that make a city great is a huge part of how we approach everything at Bunkhouse,” Bonifacio explains. “We want this Jo’s Coffee to feel singular to Houston Heights for everyone who comes in.”

To celebrate the opening, Jo’s will offer customers free drip coffee all day on Friday. In addition, it will give away a limited number of Jo’s Coffee posters, as seen on the shop’s Instagram.

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Bunkhouse has made a splash in Houston in the past few months. As Bonifcaio notes, the company opened the Hotel Saint Augustine, its first Houston property, in December. Later this year, it will add the Hotel Daphne, a new property on 20th St, in the Heights. Could another Jo’s location be far behind?

“We’re always looking at growth and to the future, but right now, we’re focusing on getting it right with this first Houston location,” Bonifcaio writes.

Photo by Chad Wadsworth

Jo's Coffee has arrived in Houston.

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restaurant boom

Texas to lead nation in culinary job growth by 2032, report predicts

Photo by Lucas Law on Unsplash

With all the booming restaurant scenes in major cities like Houston, Texas' overall culinary industry will grow faster than the rest of the country within the next six years, Escoffier found.

A new analysis of the states that will have the most culinary industry job growth has revealed that Texas is expected to lead the nation with the fastest growth in the country by 2032.

The nationally recognized Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts' study, published December 30, 2025, compared all 50 states to determine their job prospects for chefs and head cooks, restaurant cooks, and food service managers based on three key metrics: projected growth rates from 2022-2032; "absolute job creation" (the total number of projected new positions) during the same 10-year span, and actual job growth rates from 2022-2024.

Texas' culinary industry is expected to grow by 24.88 percent by 2032, the report found, which is the highest projected growth rate nationwide. That translates to more than 52,000 culinary jobs created within the next six years.

Escoffier also broke down individual projections across all three metrics:

45,150 new restaurant cook jobs, a 39.72 percent increase
3,580 new chef and head cook jobs, a 19.76 percent increase
3,340 new food service manager jobs, a 15.17 percent increase

"The top three states alone — Texas, California, and Florida — will add nearly 130,000 culinary jobs, almost 45 percent of all jobs created in this industry (despite those states making up about 28 percent of the nation’s population)," the report said. "This demonstrates an extraordinary scale of opportunity for job seekers willing to relocate to states with booming restaurant scenes."

Major Texas cities, including Houston, are home to numerous highly esteemed award-winning chefs that are defining local restaurant scenes. And there are just as many up-and-coming chefs rising through the culinary pipeline.

As Escoffier notes, projections are just one factor among many that determine the strength of the national culinary industry. Texas' combined actual culinary job growth from 2022-2024 is down 0.28 percent when compared to expectations.

"This simply means that, over the past few years, the state appears to have underperformed growth projections; the industry still grew in that state, but perhaps not as much as anticipated," the report's author clarifies. "Given the short timeframe (2022-2024), this category plays a small role in our rankings relative to the ten-year projections."

Washington led the U.S. with the most new culinary jobs added from 2022-2024, with 5,800 positions created during that time. Escoffier said Washington handily beat expectations that only 1,300 jobs would be added, representing a 348 percent "overperformance."

The top 10 states with the fastest-growing culinary industry are:

No. 1 – Texas
No. 2 – California
No. 3 – Georgia
No. 4 – Florida
No. 5 – Washington
No. 6 – North Carolina
No. 7 – Utah
No. 8 – Arizona
No. 9 – Nevada
No. 10 – Alabama

texas culinary job market reports