A beloved Tampa-based coffee roaster and beer brewer is expanding — and it’s coming to downtown St. Petersburg, specifically the COhatch co-working space, located inside the historic Harlan Hotel building at 15 8th Street North.

King State, which opened its only other location on Floribraska Avenue in Tampa in 2019, will be located on COhatch’s ground floor. Nate Young, who owns the business with his brother-in-law Tim McTague, says King State initially focused on coffee and added beer along the way, but it’s also known for its food, offering a robust selection of sandwiches, salads, pizza, and even breakfast items.

“Obviously, coffee is still our main thing, and now that we have distribution of beer, you can get our beer all over, which is great,” he says. “But coffee and food are the driving forces. What’s been cool about King State is that we haven’t latched onto one specific thing. We’ve focused on a number of different offerings and I think that’s worked in our favor.”

King State will offer an all-day breakfast featuring items like biscuits and gravy, grits, granola, and breakfast sandwiches.

For lunch and later, a menu of sandwiches will be available, such as the Hulk, which consists of roasted turkey, basil pesto, bacon, swiss cheese, arugula, and pickles on sourdough. Or if you’re not in the mood for a sandwich, check out one of the many pizzas made in-house at King State. The T.B. Carolyn Baskin is red sauce, prosciutto, spicy salami, roasted pork, bacon, rosemary garlic, mozzarella, and parmesan.

Menu items will rotate, and specials will be offered throughout the year.

In addition to a full espresso bar, King State will have tea, beer, wine, cocktails, hard seltzer, and more.

Sixteen beers will be on tap in St. Pete, all made by King State. “We’ll work on doing specific beers that you can only get at the St. Pete location, like a house beer that you’ll have to travel there to get,” says Young.

King State is no stranger to St. Pete. Young says he has a fondness for the city because when he was growing up in Tampa, he would cross the bridge “constantly” to visit friends and attend rock concerts in the Burg — “almost weekly, it felt like.” Also, Young and McTague acquired Flying Boat Brewing Co. in St. Pete in January 2022, renaming it The Brutalist.

Young, who played drums in the Winter Haven-based rock band Anberlin says he came up with the idea for King State with McTague, who was the lead guitarist of Underoath, another Tampa Bay area hard-rock band, when their groups were on tour.

“We would play all these big cities and discover these cool little shops along the way,” he says, “and we would always say to each other, ‘Oh, this would do really well in Tampa!’”

After Anberlin and Underoath disbanded, Young and McTague had more time on their hands. And that’s when the idea for King State was born.

“The goal is to have an all-day spot for beer, coffee, wine, food — we saw a lot of that kind of thing in Australia and Europe,” Young says. “There are a lot of places where you can grab a coffee and then stay past noon and have a beer and relax all day.”

When developing the brand, Young and McTague wanted something very Florida-centric.

“I was born and raised in Florida. I loved growing up here, so I wanted to represent that at King State. That’s why our logo is a big gator,” says Young.

According to Young, the look and feel of the St. Pete King State will be comparable to its Tampa counterpart, though it will have a much bigger kitchen that can produce a greater variety of food.

“The kitchen we’ll have in St. Pete is about half the size of our entire building in Tampa,” he says. “It’ll allow us to offer a much larger variety of food in St. Pete.”

The other big difference in St. Pete will be the building itself. COhatch, which operates co-working spaces in six other cities and is developing three in the Tampa Bay area, is setting up shop in the historic Harlan Hotel, which the Ohio-based company acquired in April 2021 for $2.25 million. The structure dates back to 1925 and was added to the St. Petersburg Register of Historic Places in 1997.

“It’s going to be a marriage made in heaven,” says Brian Sanders, COhatch’s Tampa Bay market leader. “Whenever possible, we like to have a food and beverage partner on site, and COhatch wants each location to have a hyperlocal feel. We’re trying to find the best possible local partners who are trying to do what we're trying to do, which is to create a symbiotic culture — and King State is such a cool brand, but it’s also a community, with its own tribe, its own people. Of course, they want to make great coffee, great beer, great food, but they have this special intangible thing that only comes when you create a place where people feel they belong.”

Like King State, COhatch is on track for a late spring or early summer opening, according to Sanders. “We’re looking for one big grand opening,” he says.

Although King State continues to play a big role in Young and McTague’s life, the duo isn’t ready to say goodbye to their music careers. Both Anberlin and Underoath have gotten back together and are working on new material.

Follow King State on Instagram at @k1ngst8 and COhatch at @COhatchCommunity.