Fat Cup Coffee Company

Ryan, the owner of Fat Cup Coffee Company, is regularly behind the counter on Fletcher Avenue in Waterloo and will sometimes pull your shot on a Saturday himself. The shop roasts its own beans, and Fat Cup bags also turn up on the shelves at the regional Fareway grocery chain, which is the kind of distribution that quietly tells you the roasting is taken seriously enough that a chain wanted in. That's a meaningful credential in a small-town Iowa coffee market where most independent roasters never make it onto a grocery shelf at all. The interior is classy and small with a board game selection on hand, a clean feel, and a lot of seating options for the footprint. Order the house coffee (a regular calls it classic, which is its own kind of compliment), a London Fog latte, an iced latte, an espresso pulled by Ryan if he's the one on the bar that morning. Saturday work crowds settle in here for a reason: solo workers get a quiet table, freshly roasted beans to take home, and conversation with the person who made the coffee, which is the trifecta of what a small-town roastery is supposed to offer. The one caveat is the schedule. Posted hours have not always held up. One customer turned up at 7am to a posted 6am opening and found no one inside, so if your morning hinges on Fat Cup, give yourself a backup plan and a phone number. Otherwise this is the kind of spot where the person who made your coffee is the same person who roasted it earlier that week, and you can hand back the empty mug and tell them what you thought of it. The board games are not a gimmick. People play them. Bring a friend, settle in for an hour over chess or Catan, leave with a bag of beans and the name of the person who roasted them. The owner-led service is the place's defining feature, and the bag on the Fareway shelf is the receipt.