Photo: JD’s Cafe
You don’t have to be hungry to have a reason to visit JD’s Cafe.
The Waco business serves its own roasted coffee alongside a scratch-made bakery and full restaurant menu. General manager Kim Henderson hopes people will also come for something less tangible: a place where they can sit down, stay awhile and feel welcome.
“We just want to be that hospitality hub,” Henderson said.
The cafe is now working to make its coffee and seating area a bigger part of that vision, especially during the hours between meals when the restaurant is quieter.
“We’re kind of wanting to grow ... the coffee side,” Henderson said.
The cafe recently added new counters and a large high-top table to create more seating, particularly for customers who want to come in outside of the usual breakfast, lunch and dinner hours. Henderson said the business hopes to attract more Baylor students and others looking for somewhere to study or spend part of their day.
“Come and study all day, come and sit and take up tables,” Henderson said.
The cafe offers guest Wi-Fi and encourages customers to stay as long as they like. Henderson said the new seating is part of an effort to grow the coffee business heading into the holidays and spring semester.
Coffee is one part of a business that has continued to expand since JD’s Cafe opened in November 2024. The cafe’s history goes back further, to the original JD’s Cafe, which opened on Austin Avenue in 1998. After a fire forced that location to close, owners JD and Lisa continued catering for years before opening the current location.
Since then, the cafe has grown from offering limited meal service to serving breakfast, lunch and dinner six days a week. It also has a grab-and-go market for customers looking for prepared food to take home or pick up on the go and offers a variety of options for dietary restrictions.
Through JD’s Celebrations, the business also offers event venues, food and rentals, giving customers the option to coordinate multiple parts of an event through the same business.
The cafe also makes an effort to support the community. Henderson said it donates food to Mission Waco and has worked with Acts of Mercy to support relief efforts following flooding in Nepal.
“Part of our vision is just to always see the need in the community and put a percentage of our profits into that place,” Henderson said.
For Henderson, the different parts of the business come back to the same idea: making people feel cared for.
“We got to love people, we got to care,” Henderson said. “Customers are really everything.”
As JD’s Cafe continues to grow, Henderson hopes more Waco residents will discover its coffee and feel comfortable making the cafe part of their routine, whether they stop in for a quick drink, meet someone for lunch or spend an afternoon at a table.