Serving Coffee Two Ways: Inside Houndstooth's Round Bar in Dallas

Sean Henry drew on a familiar Texas ritual—lining up for barbecue—when he conceived the newest Houndstooth Coffee location.

“At my favorite places you’d wait in line for a really long time, but then they’d cut the meat right in front of you,” the Houndstooth founder says. “They’d ask if you wanted it fatty, or meaty, or if you wanted burnt ends.”

That interactive counter experience, Henry felt, was worth carrying over to the new Dallas shop (Houndstooth also operates another Dallas café and two in Austin).

Set within a mixed-use development west of downtown, the site gave Henry the chance to realize a long-held ambition: a coffee bar that wraps a full 360 degrees. Stools run along half of the circular counter, putting guests close to the baristas at work.

“We can talk to people from all kinds of angles, and they watch us work,” Henry says. “Some people in the morning sidle up to the bar and just watch things, and that’s great. That’s part of waking up.”

For the café’s look, Houndstooth collaborated with Official Design and took cues from the natural world. A suspended wooden volume—what Henry fondly calls the “cloud”—floats over the bar. Sun-shaped light fixtures and large windows bring in daylight and open sightlines to plantings outdoors. The same approach extends to Jettison, the cocktail bar next door, where darker tones evoke moonlight falling in layers.

Guests who linger at the bar can settle in and pay their tab when they leave, as they would at any bar. Yet Henry is equally mindful that plenty of customers are pressed for time. “You just want to get your coffee and get out sometimes,” Henry says. “It’s being able to take both of those and apply them to our milieu there in the new store.”

What emerged is a café with two service paths, letting each guest follow their own sense of urgency. Those who want to stay put take a stool at the bar and wait for a barista to come to them. Those grabbing coffee to go join the line at the point of service and order the way they would in a conventional café.

“We’re still figuring it out—we knew it’d be a new service model for us, but it’s also exciting, and the goal was to create an approachable guest experience,” Henry says. “We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we’re not trying to do what we’ve done before. We’re trying to keep ourselves interested and challenged.”

The interplay between bar and café—Jettison included—has worked well for Houndstooth. Official Design received the 2016 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Dallas Built Design Honor Award for the concept.

Top, Above: Houndstooth Coffee Interior.

1) Three’s Company: Three Nuova Simonelli Mythos One grinders hold the shop’s espresso beans: the house blend, a single-origin or alternate offering, and decaf.

2) Eagle’s Nest: Houndstooth has many callouts to its other locations, including the three-group Victoria Arduino VA388 Black Eagle Gravitech (in white, of course). A small set of cups keeps warm on the machine; the rest are kept on the back bar.

3) Tapped Out: Customers can choose from seven or eight beers on tap, or from beer and wine selections displayed on shelving that hangs from the “cloud.”

4) Sexy Seraphim: Four Curtis Seraphim pour-over stands take pride-of-place near the point-of-sale (water towers are stored underneath the counter). Henry says he opted for the Seraphim version of Curtis’s Gold Cup technology because the stands “look a lot sexier.” Coffee brews into Ball jars for a classic, Texas touch.

5) Sidle Up: Customers seated at the bar are encouraged to pay at the end of their visit. Houndstooth founder Sean Henry says the setup is intended to “create engagement literally all the way around the bar.”

6) Retail Greeting: The café has doors on opposing walls of the 360-degree bar. To help direct traffic, customers entering the parking lot–side door are greeted with a retail display, encouraging them to continue on to the barista manning the point-of-sale.

1) Grind It Out: A Mahlkönig EK 43 grinds bulk coffee, as well as beans for by-the-cup brewing. Houndstooth offers coffee from Tweed, Counter Culture, and Roseline.

2) Keeping a Low Profile: Henry says they store most supplies underneath the bar, keeping the countertops clean and neat. This includes stacks of pre-stamped to-go cups, pre-folded towels, bulk coffee, and espresso machine cleaning tools.

3) Condiment-nation: Lids, sleeves, cream, sugar, water, napkins—they’re all here, along with a bus tub and trash bin.