Houston’s Coolest New Coffee Shop is a Giant Leap Forward for Uptown Park — and Soon the East End

Houston’s new space-themed coffee shop, Giant Leap Coffee, has touched down in Uptown Park. However, Giant Leap is not leaving its beloved East End behind with its reimagined flagship location still scheduled for a winter launch.

Giant Leap only opened its doors at 1135 Uptown Park Boulevard on September 1 and expansion is already underway. Giant Leap owner and founder Logan Beck is already working on outdoor seating for the jewel box of a 650 square feet space.

“We’ve got a concrete bed out on the front side of the building near Loft that originally was always going to be outdoor seating.” Beck tells PaperCity. “And the shopping center has some two-tops out there and they had removed them because of COVID, so I’m just working on getting them back.

“They should hopefully be back this week.”

The new Giant Leap Coffee brings a diverse drink menu with options such as the Horchata Cold Brew, Vietnamese Cafe Sua Da and a lemonade made from Calamansi, a Filipino citrus.

Giant Leap is also keeping it local and serving Amaya coffee along with other Houston-area roasts.

While Beck closed down Giant Leap’s original location in Houston’s East End for the opening of the Uptown shop, the coffee retreat will not be gone for long. A new East End Giant Leap is scheduled to open in an even bigger 3,200 square foot neigborhood location at The Plant at Harrisburg development this winter. That’s just five blocks away from the original shuttered Giant Leap.

Beck hopes to start construction on the new East End shop soon. The large Plant location is going to serve as Giant Leap’s command center and it will be the budding brand’s flagship location. It will include a large kitchen that’ll serve breakfast and lunch, plus a new pastry kitchen dubbed Tlahuac.

“(Tlahuac is) going to be producing pastries for both locations and it’s going to be really cool,” Beck tells PaperCity. “The pastry room looks out on the dining room so if you’re in there having a coffee you can see them working on the pastries.”

Near the open kitchen, the flagship Giant Leap Coffee will have a large dining room with plenty of seating, including a large community table that’s perfect to study or work at.

Because it’s Houston and temperatures below 90 degrees are considered cool, Beck and his company rootlab (which is doing all of the construction work for Giant Leap) have come up with a creative solution to having indoor/outdoor seating in a city where triple-digit temperatures aren’t uncommon.

“We’ve got a large indoor patio that’s about 800 square feet that’s basically part of the warehouse that we’re in but we’re cutting a huge skylight that’s going to be retractable so it’ll be open-air part of the time,” Beck details.

This unique concept was inspired by a couple of coffee shops Beck visited in Mexico City. Giant Leap Coffee is going to be bright with lots of plants.

Giant Leap’s East End Love Affair

Houston’s East End is an important place for Beck. His other business, rootlab, has been based out of the neighborhood for the past six years. In that time, Beck’s seen the East End transform and the original Giant Leap was his way of contributing to that metamorphosis.

“The mission is just to be a part of the community over there and help it grow in a cool and interesting way and hopefully have a spot for people to have breakfast and lunch with their families and come to other cool community events,” Beck says.

The new East End Giant Leap will not only have an expanded kitchen menu, but also an expanded drink menu with around eight rotating local beers on draft, as well as kombucha

The small bar area is designed for when you want “to go sit at a barstool with your laptop and have a mid-afternoon beer,” Beck notes. A relaxing atmosphere is “exactly the kind of vibe we’re going for in there,” he says.

Giant Leap, especially its upcoming East End flagship, is centered around community and being a part of the neighborhood.

“In the East End we’re close enough to University of Houston to where we already saw a lot of UH students coming by and I want to lean into that because I love having the students in here,” Beck says

Giant Leap wants to be more than just a place to grab a cup of fresh brewed coffee. “It’s the kind of space where people come and they hang out and make it a real place of community,” Beck says.