Flat Track Coffee

Flat Track Coffee began in 2012 as a mobile coffee catering operation, started by longtime friends Sterling Roberts and Matt Bolick, who first bonded over BMX riding before turning that friendship into a business. The mobile setup gave them a way to build a following without the upfront cost of a storefront, and by March 2013 that following was large enough to support a permanent shop on East Cesar Chavez Street in Austin's eastside -- a stretch of the city that was still developing its coffee identity at the time. The location doubles as a bike shop, sharing space with Cycleast, a pairing that reflects the founders' own background and keeps the shop's culture closer to a community clubhouse than a standard roastery storefront. Flat Track roasts its own beans on-site and has built a reputation as one of Austin's leading independent micro-roasters and wholesale suppliers, supplying other local cafes in addition to running its own retail counter. Roberts has described the founding goal in explicitly community terms -- using coffee, much like BMX before it, as a way to bring people together in a specific neighborhood rather than chase citywide scale. More than a decade in, the East Cesar Chavez shop remains the flagship, still built around strong espresso and an unhurried pace.