Giant Leap Coffee was our first homegrown project and our first sister business.

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I love coffee and had always enjoyed visiting highly designed coffee shops in other cities, so I'd been doing research for quite some time, whether I realized it or not. We had been discussing opening a second business that could both offer a service to the neighborhood and provide us a space to showcase our furniture and capabilities. Turns out, an old friend, Lauren Ferrante, was working on a business plan for a coffee shop so we decided to join forces.

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We decided to name it Giant Leap Coffee, not only because we wanted to celebrate Houston's key role in the history of space exploration but also because it literally was giant leap for us to take the project on. We raised a little bit of money from a group of supportive friends and family and went about developing the concept.

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We hired our friends Daniel Cardoza (who also built this website) and Enrique Garza to create the branding and visual identity. rootlab designed and built almost every element in the space that wasn't an appliance or coffee machine down to the smallest details including CNC sculpted walnut espresso trays and custom espresso cups made by our very own Jacob Villalobos. We made a space-aged faceted steel and polygal ceiling, a black glass-reinforced concrete front counter with specs of white marble dust cast into it (to make it look like the starry night sky), an 18' banquette, six CNC tapered "hourglass" stools, 10 snap together CNC cut stools, stainless counters with white oak bar, shelving, a pastry case, and interior signage. We opened our doors January 12th, 2018 and it's been a wild ride ever since. We closed this location in August 2020 in anticipation of opening a larger location in the East End in Winter 2020. - Logan