:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67325991/p.0.jpg)
Popular catering company and bakery Word of Mouth is opening a second location in Bouldin Creek. It will be located at 1506 South First Street, in the now-former home of Seventh Flag Coffee, starting on Friday, February 12.
The new location of Word of Mouth already features a large patio shaded with trees, so owner Leslie Moore wants to expand to serve dinner, beer, and wine, a first for the bakery. It will also offer the same daytime menu as the original cafe on 12th Street, which means sandwiches like a pecan pimento cheese, salads, and baked goods. He is still developing the dinner menu, but it will be casual.
To ensure safety during the pandemic, currently, Word of Mouth is requiring masks for customers and staff, conducting staff temperature checks and occasional testing, sanitizing frequently, and limiting the number of people inside the small space on 12th Street. Moore says that although the new space has a few seats inside, guests will be encouraged to sit outdoors.
Moore has quite the history in the restaurant industry, as recounted by Statesman. He began working in the service industry during segregation in his hometown of Corpus Christi. While he was a student at the University of Texas Austin in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked at private club and event space Headliners Club. He moved to Bouldin Creek with his wife in 1980, and opened his first catering company in 1987. He partnered with Rebecca Wallace Ford, who had been running Word of Mouth out of her home since the 1980s. They sold the company in 2001, but then Moore bought it back in 2008, and expanded with a public-facing bakery in 2015.
The second Word of Mouth bakery makes even more sense for Moore, seeing as he owns the space that Elizabeth Street Cafe rents, which is just across the street.
Moore had also been operating tiny Rainey Street patio restaurant L’Estelle House for seven months before restaurants began to close in COVID-19. Though he planned to hold onto the downtown lease, he voluntarily moved out for now, as the South First space presented a better opportunity. Word of Mouth Bakery had taken over L’Estelle quietly last year from founding co-owners Craig and Holly Nasso, who opened the bistro and on-site bar Drafting Room in 2015.
Word of Mouth’s initial hours on South First will be from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Moore is also considering making use of Word of Mouth’s food truck, with details to come later.
Seventh Flag closed in July 2020 due to the surge in cases of novel coronavirus, after briefly reopening for to-go orders that June. The coffee shop opened in June 2014.
Update, February 8, 2021, 2:50 p.m.: This article, originally published on September 1, 2020, has been updated to reflect the opening date of Word of Mouth in South Austin.
