Jo's Coffee – Downtown — Restaurant in Austin

First time here with friends, and it was alright. Here are my thoughts about the environment and the iced chai tea that I bought:

Environment Pros: Right off the bat, the location is very cozy. It has a retro look to it. Lots of seating available inside and outside. Staff is friendly.

Cons: You do have to clean up your own table at the end, "bus your own table." Staff did NOT put the lid on my drink for me. It was made, then given to the customer. The stack of lids was right next to the pickup area. The employee started talking to other staff right after setting the drink down, and she was not very loud when announcing the drink. Mind you, there were like 10 people inside during this time, so it was not loud at all.

Iced chai tea Pros: Drinks differ from small and large, which did show a good size difference. Drink was tasty enough.

Cons: Chai tea was not as flavorful as I had hoped based on other reviews that I read. It had a faint chai flavor. It was watered down with the ice, and there was a more milky flavor than chai flavor as well. I have had better flavors with the Starbucks chai tea. The drink definitely needs more spice.

Overall, the cafe was ok at best. It's not somewhere I would look towards if I wanted a drink during the day. Some friends had mystery drinks, which are not on the menu, but you can request it. They do ask if you have any preferences or allergies beforehand, which is a plus. Their drinks were tasty, and they do offer food.

In my opinion, the cafe is a nice sit-down location. However, it's not amazing....

We visited Jo’s after running along the river in Austin. I was expecting a pretty decent coffee shop with freshly baked goods and different varieties of coffee. I ordered black coffee and there was only one choice for the type of roast. I would think if you are passionate enough to open a ‘coffee’ shop, you would at least have halfway decent black coffee in light, medium, and dark roasts. At a minimum. The coffee itself was fine, as in I would’ve gotten the same quality cup from just about any McDonalds or similar non-coffee fast food restaurant. There was not a huge selection of baked goods and they were pre-packaged from some other store. We got there right at 8 on Sunday morning, so I would have to guess the baked goods we got were not fresh and were leftover from the previous day. One of my friends also ordered a breakfast taco and we waited maybe 15 minutes before it was brought out. The person taking our order was also not very friendly. To top it all off, they have an Avocado Toast menu item that is $13!! 1 avocado is roughly $1 and a piece of bread is probably $0.25. How that adds up to a price of $13 on the menu is beyond me, and makes me think very poorly of the restaurant owner. Overall I would not recommend. Visit somewhere else if you want good coffee and...

I usually don't stop in at hole in the wall coffee shops but this morning after I got off work I was really feeling a cold drink so I stepped into Jo's. I got the iced turbo and had them add an espresso shot to it, it was pretty good, maybe just a tad on the pricy side. But let me tell you... I offhandedly bought a chocolate muffin while I was at the register, not even cuz I was hungry just thought it might be good later or something. I had very low expectations for it as it felt hard when I picked it up, and I was pretty sure it was going to be dry or have a weird flavor. I couldn't have been further from the truth. I took it home, and let it sit at room temp for a few hours before finally eating it and man oh man was that one of the best chocolate muffins I ever ate. Every single bite, the whole muffin and the top, had the rich, full dark chocolate flavor (without any kind of after taste) and the entire thing was about as soft and moist as fresh fudgy brownies right when they finish cooking. I kept taking bite after bite, expecting to come to the bad part of the muffin but it never came. %110 worth every penny I spent on it. I can't say for the rest of their food (yet) but man Jo's Coffee sure is doing something right with those...