Austin’s Jo’s Coffee opens first Tennessee cafe in Nashville

Jo’s Coffee crossed its first state line in Nashville, opening its first Tennessee cafe on April 10 inside Dream Nashville at 210 4th Avenue North. The Austin-born chain now has 11 locations, but this one matters more than a simple store count: it is Jo’s first shop outside Texas, a test of whether a regional coffee brand built on South Congress personality can hold onto that identity in Printer’s Alley.

The new cafe sits in the historic Climax Saloon building, part of the Dream Nashville complex anchored by the Climax Saloon and Utopia Hotel, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That setting gives Jo’s a ready-made audience of hotel guests, downtown workers and visitors moving through one of Nashville’s most walkable pockets. It also places the brand inside a hospitality ecosystem where atmosphere matters as much as the cup.

Hyatt now sits behind the expansion. The company announced plans to acquire Standard International and Bunkhouse Hotels on August 20, 2024, then completed the deal on October 2, 2024. Bunkhouse is the Austin hospitality company behind Jo’s Coffee, which makes the Nashville opening part of a larger corporate reset rather than a one-off market experiment. For Hyatt, the move extends a brand with a strong local following into a new city; for Jo’s, it raises the stakes on whether its personality can scale.

What Nashville gets is not a stripped-down version of the Austin original. Jo’s is serving its House blend, developed with La Colombe Coffee Roasters, in drip and espresso drinks, along with the Iced Turbo, the creamy iced coffee drink built around coffee, espresso, hazelnut, chocolate and cream. The menu also includes breakfast tacos, pastries and sandwiches, giving the cafe enough food to function as a daytime stop, not just a caffeine pit stop.

That matters because Jo’s original South Congress shop earned its name by being more than a place to buy coffee. Founded in 1999, the South Congress location became a community hangout that hosted fundraisers and concerts and welcomed dogs. By bringing the same blend, the signature Iced Turbo and a full cafe menu to Nashville, Jo’s is betting that its Austin formula can travel without getting watered down. The shop is open daily from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the real question is whether Printer’s Alley becomes a second home base or just the brand’s first out-of-state flag.