Patika Coffee

- Location: 2nd St. & Congress Ave.
- Hours: Monday - Friday: 7:30 AM - 4:30 PM
              Saturday: 8 AM - 1PM
- Telephone: 512-535-3955
- Website: www.patikacoffee.com / Facebook: Patika Coffee / Twitter: patikacoffee
- Cuisine: Coffee.  Pastries.


Andy Wigginton and Nick Krupa kicked their software careers to pursue happiness via coffee.  Their inspiration for Patika came five years prior to opening when they were on vacation in San Francisco.  “We came across a coffee cart (Blue Bottle) at the farmers market that had a huge swarm of people around it.  We had the best lattes we’d ever had.  Their original location was a tucked away garage door in Hays Valley.  We make it a ritual to go there every time we go back and have a quest to find really great coffee in great cities.”  

Patika is a Turkish word that means ‘foot path’ but also implies a hidden pathway.  Back in the 1500’s, some of the first coffee houses in the world were in Istanbul and they were outlawed for their popularity, so many of them would set up in back alleys and foot paths.  These coffee houses were the original speakeasies.  Since Andy and Nick were inspired by a coffee house that was off the beaten path, and since they are on a well-traveled beat downtown, the name Patika was a perfect fit for their other worldly coffee and refreshing teas.

The partners say that Austin is a great city to start high end coffee.  In their words, “The community is really supportive of small businesses, everyone is very laid back and has a very open and accepting attitude where if you want to try something different in a different way they like that and embrace it.  We have a great lifestyle – anyone that comes here feels it.  We meet a lot of tourists being down town and they talk about how Austin feels like a nice place where people are appreciative of outdoors and nice people.  Having lived in California, New York, and Europe, Austin feels like the right combination of big enough stuff to do but small enough with community – although we could turn the temperature down about 15 degrees.”