In this episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain sits down with Gabe Hagen, the co-founder of Brick Road Coffee in Tempe, Arizona, to discuss his journey from corporate banking compliance to creating a thriving, queer-owned community gathering space.
After a 15-year career in the banking industry, complete with a Master’s degree in law and compliance, Gabe realized he was unfulfilled by the rigid, soul-sucking constraints of corporate America. Faced with the isolation of the 2020 pandemic and a profound personal reckoning regarding his mental health and true allyship, he decided to leave the corporate world behind. He launched Brick Road Coffee not just to sell coffee, but to build a “brave space” where everyone could find authentic belonging, human connection, and safety.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The Power of a “Third Space”: Why the ultimate goal of his business isn’t just serving beverages, but facilitating human connection and hosting community-led events—from queer trivia and history nights to open crochet meetups.
- Navigating Pushback and Advocacy: The terrifying reality of receiving a bomb threat, protests from the Proud Boys, and being doxxed over a drag story time event—and how it propelled Gabe into national advocacy for small businesses.
- Redefining Corporate Success: Gabe’s vision for a new kind of capitalism based on “radical hospitality” and values alignment, prioritizing living wages, mental health, and community impact over endless profit margins.
- Embracing the Ecosystem: Why he views other local coffee shops as part of a collaborative ecosystem rather than competitors, and why he freely shares his playbook with anyone looking to build a purposeful business.
- Prioritizing Mental Health: A candid look at the dark spaces that pushed Gabe to make a life-changing pivot, the importance of consistent therapy, and how protecting your personal time (even at a gym you hate) makes for a better leader.
For anyone feeling stuck in the corporate grind, business owners looking to align their operations with their values, or leaders navigating community backlash, this episode offers a profound look at building an impactful brand from the ground up.
Listen to the full episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour podcast to hear Gabe’s inspiring story of resilience and unapologetic community building.
Full Transcript
Rosaria Cain 0:00
Hello, everyone. I want you to meet Gabe. Gabe is in the coffee business. And who doesn’t love coffee? Welcome, Gabe.
Gabe Hagen 0:08
Thank you so much for having me.
Rosaria Cain 0:09
So, tell me, how’s the coffee business right now?
Gabe Hagen 0:13
You know, it’s actually quite fun. There’s a lot of challenges. There always is. I feel like with every business, no matter what you do, but coffee. The nice part is we’re recession resistant. We don’t really feel as much as others industries may. The end of the day, people still need their daily cup of coffee. It comes in different formats, but it’s not a horrible business to be in, and it fills your cup in more ways than one, whether it be community or literal coffee.
Rosaria Cain 0:45
That’s great. Well, who’s drinking coffee these days? Everybody,
Gabe Hagen 0:49
everybody. You know, the interesting trend that we see is is related to Gen Z, and believe it or not, Gen Z is drinking coffee at home. They are brewing at home.
Rosaria Cain 1:01
They’re so antisocial.
Gabe Hagen 1:02
They are in a way, but they’re so much more social in other ways. I am constantly inspired by some of what they can create, but yeah, it’s fun to watch how Gen Z will create really artisanal coffee for themselves at home. It’s not like your old, just pour it into a Folgers brewer, and let it come out. They’re doing pour overs.
Rosaria Cain 1:29
They’re doing espresso and cappuccino.
Gabe Hagen 1:32
Chemex, and all sorts of tips and tricks. And then they film it in beautiful lighting and put it on their social media and drink it, and it’s like, I love this so much.
Rosaria Cain 1:40
But doesn’t it get cold if they do that?
Gabe Hagen 1:42
Well, they usually make iced.
Rosaria Cain 1:43
Oh, well I guess that doesn’t matter then. Well, there you go. Well, this time of year.
Gabe Hagen 1:48
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 1:49
I can understand. Well, are you having any issues navigating these times? I know you’re recession resistant, but these are some unusual times.
Gabe Hagen 1:59
Yeah, I mean, it’s unusual in kind of several different ways. Obviously, we had most recently the impacts from the tariffs, which has been..
Rosaria Cain 2:09
Does that impact the coffee business?
Gabe Hagen 2:11
Yeah, believe it or not, coffee doesn’t grow in the United States, so we import 100% of our product.
Rosaria Cain 2:19
You know what? I should know that. I should have done that in research, but it did not occur to me.
Gabe Hagen 2:23
You know, a lot of people didn’t, and that’s why, like, I went to DC to talk to lawmakers about just some of the.. you can, however, people want to believe on what tariffs can do for policy. There’s reasons why you might want to use them to reshore something that’s in manufacturing or for safety and security, but like I told every lawmaker I met with, “How are you going to reshore a product that doesn’t grow in our climate, in our country?” and “Is every country that we grow coffee in a national security threat?” and they could not say yes to both of those.
Rosaria Cain 3:05
How impressed were you with our lawmakers, exactly?
Gabe Hagen 3:08
I wouldn’t say impressed.
Rosaria Cain 3:09
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m surprised.
Gabe Hagen 3:12
I would say, you know, I respect the lawmakers that show up and genuinely try to engage in dialog, because at the end of the day, the conversations we’re having, they’re not partisan conversations. It’s literally, let’s talk this through. I’m not so set in my way. Is that like, if you told me that there was this extremely important reason why we have to tax, or tariff, all of this coffee, I’m here, I’ll listen. But if you can’t have that conversation, then we have to be able to come to common language of like what makes sense. So I’m always impressed by the lawmakers that actually show up. Only one Republican lawmaker even let us meet with staffers, which was kind of disappointing. That was probably the most frustrating part was getting the nose that they wouldn’t even meet with business owners that flew all the way out there too.
Rosaria Cain 4:05
Isn’t coffee a bipartisan issue?
Gabe Hagen 4:07
Yeah, there’s a Bipartisan coffee Caucus, actually. So there’s all sorts of fun stuff, but I mean that’s one aspect of it, and I mean, right now, too, the other thing we’re seeing is obviously we’re a proudly queer-owned business, we’re proudly safe space, and brave space is what I typically try to call it. And we are seeing, and it’s Pride month right now, we’re seeing a lot of businesses pull back on their visible support, and it’s frustrating, you know. And it’s one of those things that I think that’s always going to be a competitive advantage for us is that we’re not afraid to be consistent in our support, because at the end of the day I’m queer 24/7.
Rosaria Cain 4:47
And you’re loud and proud, and that’s great. Well, what made you go into advocacy? That’s a big decision, and bold.
Gabe Hagen 4:58
I was actually. Just thinking about this over the weekend, and like it was never my intention to go into advocacy. When we started in 2021, obviously, it was still a fairly polarized – well, it’s just gotten more polarized environment, and we had to navigate starting a business in a world that was completely new to every single person, we leaned into what we saw was the need, which was a third space, a place for people to gather, place for people to find humanity in each other again, if you will, and do so in a safe and caring way that led to ultimately some pretty nasty pushback, you know, we didn’t quiet ourselves or or hide who we were, and that upset a lot of people, and so ended up being in 2022 or 2023 I remember after now it’s been so long, but we had one of our… it was a story time for kids, it was a drag story time for kids, it had to be canceled during the event because we had the Proud Boys in our parking lot protesting us, we had church groups in our parking lot protesting. We had people that drove in from California to dox us on the internet, and then we had ultimately a bomb threat sent into our business. It doxed the business address and also my home address, and so that was kind of the first taste of what it was like just to try to run a business as myself, and how that really upset people, and so that sparked the desire to be a little bit more vocal about things. I didn’t want to be the face of necessarily that movement. I firmly believe, and like drag is for everybody. It’s not something that should be so villainized, like it is, just like trans people shouldn’t be villainized. But I wanted to move into a space where I felt like I could advocate for just common sense, and that really kind of aligned beautifully with advocating for policies for small businesses, for those of us that are out here trying to do the hard work of creating community at our local level. So, kind of just long story short, kind of just happened.
Rosaria Cain 5:45
And that’s amazing. Now, explain, drag is for everybody.
Gabe Hagen 6:08
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 6:08
Tell me about that. Walk me through that, because I’m fascinated by that.
Gabe Hagen 6:08
At the end of the day, I mean, it’s kind of cheesy, but RuPaul says it says it best: “We’re all born naked, the rest is drag.”
Rosaria Cain 6:18
That is true.
Gabe Hagen 6:19
Everything we wear. We’re dressing up, right? We’re putting on on a costume. I mean, literally, you look back in our history, and you have, you have gender norms, which have switched and changed so many different ways. You have 1918 was the first time that there was an article published that said pink is for boys or or blue is for girls or whatever, but it was very much the opposite, and then it wasn’t till the 40s and post World War Two were where that color dynamic was switched, and now we associate in our mask in our culture of pink being for more feminine and blue being more masculine, that was completely opposite, you know, 100 years ago, and so there’s always an evolution of things. What is considered masculine now might be not in 100 years, because it is a, at the end of the day, a construct. So, drag is for everybody. I say that because just like you have dancers, you have performers, you have artists, you have singers of all genres. Not everybody’s gonna like everybody’s artistic expressions. Somebody might not like, you know, country music, somebody might not like reggae, but the common theme is that they enjoy music, right, and I think that’s what it comes down to, drag, drag is a performance art, and I think people forget that, and so, yes, there are performance artists out there that are, you know, at a nightclub and are in an adult space, and they do perform for adults, but there’s also performers out there that are just like somebody dressing up as a Disney princess to go to a birthday party.
Rosaria Cain 9:50
Sure,
Gabe Hagen 9:51
There’s nothing inappropriate about that, other than they’re they’re tapping into a kid’s imagination, and the joy and trying to spark, a joy of reading and literacy, and so I think people are so, so stuck on sometimes the hyper partisan or hyper like villainized version of something, or stereotypical version of something.
Rosaria Cain 10:18
Thank you for breaking that down to me, I have never heard it explained that way, and I think that does make complete sense. And so I’m gonna imagine that that Brick House Coffee,
Gabe Hagen 10:30
Brick Road.
Rosaria Cain 10:30
Brick Road, I’m so sorry.
Gabe Hagen 10:31
Oh, you’re good, it happens all the time, believe it or not.
Rosaria Cain 10:34
Sorry about that. Brick Road coffee is for everybody.
Gabe Hagen 10:37
It is.
Rosaria Cain 10:38
All shapes, sizes, orientations.
Gabe Hagen 10:41
Yep, doesn’t matter.
Rosaria Cain 10:42
Ethnicities, and you have the welcome mat for everybody, and that’s really what the point is. It’s not, it’s queer owned, but it’s not exclusively for a particular community, it’s for everybody.
Gabe Hagen 10:55
Yeah, I mean, I look at it as if, I mean, let’s take, let’s take the what I would consider as close to an opposite stance as you can from us. It’s not that it’s opposite, but you have companies out there like Black Rifle Coffee, right?
Rosaria Cain 11:09
Right, yeah, that would be kind of a take…
Gabe Hagen 11:11
They are open to everybody,
Rosaria Cain 11:12
Right?
Gabe Hagen 11:13
They are just very proud of their support for a certain aspect of our culture. Same thing.
Rosaria Cain 11:22
No, that makes perfect sense.
Gabe Hagen 11:22
They’re not saying I’m not welcome there,
Rosaria Cain 11:24
Right? And your site did nothing to say people were unwelcome. I just wondered, because there’s a lot of emphasis on the queer community, yeah, and the safety of gathering in a place where they could have like minds,
Gabe Hagen 11:37
And I think that’s really so important because of how we’ve gotten such to such a place where people are sending death threats to people in my community,
Rosaria Cain 11:50
don’t they have anything else to do, right?
Speaker 1 11:54
But that’s why it’s so important for me to not just be a welcoming space and a space for belonging for everyone, but to visibly and proudly show my support, and almost like you know, you talk about dating somebody, you’re like you’re looking for red flags or like green flags, like I kind of feel like we’re at a point in our society where our community is just like we don’t know what to necessarily trust, so I’m trying to basically show them as many green flags as I can, like no, no, no, no, come this way, because we’ve seen it time and time again. You look at the Target instance, instance, you have Target, who once was a proud ally that had tons of support every pride for us, and then as soon as it got uncomfortable for them, they started pulling back, you know, that to me is somebody that was just, they had a great team monitoring marketing trends, and they went after our money, but when the times got tough, they pulled their support, and that’s where I’m stepping in with my business, and I want to make sure that when I stand behind somebody, I’m willing to take a committed stance behind it.
Rosaria Cain 13:03
Why do you think things are so volatile right now? I know there’s the administration, and I know that the temperature is is hot. Are there other things that are bubbling up that were there and have just been exposed, or is this old? Is it new? Has it always been there? Is it ever going to change?
Gabe Hagen 13:23
I don’t know. I think it’s always been there to some extent. I mean, you look back through history, I’m a huge person that loves understanding our history, what we’ve been through, what we survived, what we’ve overcome, and I think whether you look at it from a personal or a political lens, fear drives action, and politicians have recognized that, and so they’ve tapped into a very vulnerable side of us,
Rosaria Cain 13:56
And insecurities.
Gabe Hagen 13:59
Yes, you talk about the bathroom bans that are constantly being talked about, especially when it comes to the trans community. Look back 50 years ago, those were the same arguments being used to say this is this was a white bathroom only, this is a black bathroom, same arguments. And I read an article recently, I unfortunately can’t remember where or who wrote it, but it was, it was really eye-opening, because it talked about the fact that bathrooms are constantly used, because as, as this weapon to divide us. Because are you ever fully not vulnerable in a bathroom? You’re literally there with your pants down.
Rosaria Cain 14:38
I would say that’s true.
Gabe Hagen 14:39
So they’re tapping into an inherently vulnerable space that everybody is going to feel that same vulnerability in, and then they’re tapping into a fear, and they’re utilizing that to try to divide us, when at the end of the day we’re just trying to go to the bathroom.
Rosaria Cain 14:55
No, that’s really interesting. Huh? Wow, I’m learning all sorts of things today. What really surprised me is that you have a degree in philosophy, and I don’t know why, except no one I know has a degree in philosophy, but I imagine it says a lot about you as a person, because philosophy is really the quest of asking why. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what the philosophy is?
Gabe Hagen 15:20
At the end of the day.
Rosaria Cain 15:21
Tell me, how did tell me about that?
Gabe Hagen 15:24
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 15:25
And also a Master’s in law.
Gabe Hagen 15:26
I do.
Rosaria Cain 15:27
Okay,
Gabe Hagen 15:27
yeah. So philosophy kind of dives into that. Philosophy is the foundation for law. Our legal system is based in philosophy, and I kind of had always had a fascination with the law and with why and why things are certain ways, so I got an associate’s from Rio Salado College and paralegal studies, and I really like started to find some some true joy in understanding words and their meanings, and how when you are setting up a system we really have to understand what we’re saying and why we’re saying it, because it carries weight, and so I dove into that from that side. And then, when I went into ASU, I decided I was like, you know what, I’m going to do political science, and I’m going to do philosophy. So, I dual majored there, philosophy. My concentration was more on the morality, politics, and the law side of it, so obviously got the foundation that everybody got, but then dove into the understandings of why our society is structured this way, where it came from, and kind of those, those, those core aspects and tenets of democracy, and then I went in to get my master’s degree. I really kind of just went in to get my master’s, because as a queer kid, always trying to find love and acceptance, you know? Maybe if I finally succeed and get a master’s degree, and maybe my parents will love me, but you know, drama, we have therapists for that, though. You know, trying to please others, there’s that. But I got my master’s degree, and I’m really glad I did, because I dove into the legal system. I dove into basically the master’s of law. The way that’s structured is it’s a law degree minus the first year of law school, so like civil procedure, how to get things into court. I didn’t go through those classes, rules of evidence, we didn’t go into that class, so we dove into the point where we’re starting to talk about constitutional law, we’re starting to talk about regulatory law, administrative law, all of that stuff. So I focused on financial regulations and corporate compliance, partly because my career at the time was in banking, and I’d been in banking.
Rosaria Cain 16:13
That was another interesting thing.
Gabe Hagen 16:15
Been in banking for 15 years. Started in 2007 at Wells. Unfortunately,
Rosaria Cain 16:31
You must’ve just been a baby.
Gabe Hagen 18:10
I was 18.
Rosaria Cain 18:12
Yeah.
Gabe Hagen 18:12
I was 18, and I started at Wells, unfortunately, in Southern California in 2007 which is like the epicenter of everything Wells was in trouble for.
Rosaria Cain 19:43
Oh yeah.
Gabe Hagen 15:27
I lived through that, and it was quite a bad environment, and I, yeah, it’s… I don’t feel like the punishment fit a crime. I feel like it was too soft, that’s my opinion, after somebody that lived through it, but that was my foundation for it. That said, I had some great mentors at the time. I had a private banker in my branch, and he sat me down on my, like, second week and was like, “Do you know what a 401 k is?” I was like, “Nope, oh no clue.” He like logged me into the benefit system, signed me up for the 401 k with a match option, matched all of it, so I didn’t know any different. I was like, my paycheck had always been the same, because basically from day one I had somebody that was just like, “No, this is the right financial move to make.” That type of leadership is what I wanted to bring to small business. So, anyway, side story on that one, but yeah, so I started in banking, moved to Arizona in 2010 because of the recession, and just couldn’t afford in San Diego any longer. Wanted to settle down, wanted to get a house, and you know, we came out here for a vacation, found a house that I was like, wait, I can buy a house, and it’s less than my current rent every month. Oh, wow, and I’m going from 400 square feet to 2100 square feet. What? And now, unfortunately, it’s like right back to the problem again. It’s like, dang it, but, but at the time it was the right move for us. I moved over to Silicon Valley Bank in 2010 no, 2012 when they opened their office here, and I was there until I left for Brick Road, and so moved my way up, worked through my degrees. I didn’t have any degrees when I started at Wells Fargo, obviously. I didn’t get my associate’s degree until, I get it wrong, 2014 or 2016 one of those two.
Rosaria Cain 19:48
One of those recessions years.
Gabe Hagen 19:52
Yeah. But it was because I used tuition reimbursement, and I paid out of pocket for a class at a time, as I could. Thankful that we had Rio and that type of affordable college system. And then I went to ASU, did a little bit of class at a time, got some reimbursement, and then my master’s got some reimbursement and paid a lot out of pocket for that. But
Rosaria Cain 20:19
You don’t have any loans?
Gabe Hagen 20:20
I don’t, thank goodness.
Rosaria Cain 20:22
Good for you.
Gabe Hagen 20:23
But it meant I didn’t get my degrees until I was in my 30s, which everybody else was had them long before, but it didn’t stop my career progression. It did slow it down. There was definitely hurdles working in a corporate system, being told you have to have a piece of paper to get to that role, and it’s like, okay, but you’re gonna hire somebody with a piece of paper that has less experience than me because I’ve been here doing the work for 10 years, but yeah, so I was in compliance towards the end of my career, and that’s why I dove into law with emphasis on financial compliance to really help me with that career.
Rosaria Cain 20:59
Now, How did you get into the coffee business?
Gabe Hagen 21:02
2020 was a remarkable time for, I think, everybody.
Rosaria Cain 21:06
Wasn’t it?
Gabe Hagen 21:07
Yeah, I think it was a combination of several things all at once. One being graduating with my Master’s in the pandemic, literally drove out to USC. We graduated, we walked from the Memorial Coliseum, the like Olympic. It was outdoors. We were six/eight feet apart. It was such a weird commencement experience. We’re all in masks and outside. So, graduated during the pandemic, came back, had the job that I wanted. I was a compliance manager, and, like, so much of my career and time had been focused on achieving these milestones, and that was that last little milestone for me was that Master’s degree, and I had to start thinking about what’s next, what do I want to do with my life when I grow up, and I started thinking about, like, okay, I could be a chief compliance officer, that could be a goal. What does that mean, and what does that all entail? And you really have to start thinking about what you do on a day-to-day basis, and what your impact is. And this is going to sound much worse than it actually is, but, like, in essence, when you’re working in compliance, or any type of legal-esque area, your conversations awfully often are structured around what you can do and can’t do, and when you would try to have the conversation of yes, you can do that, but should you, and people not understanding the difference between those conversations, and like, yes, the law may legally allow you to do that, but is that the right thing to do from a humanity standpoint? And that was a really hard pill for me to swallow, as like this is what I want to do every day, go in and like try to get people to do what they should do versus like what they legally can do. There’s a little soul sucking, so I started figuring out, like, what can I do?
Rosaria Cain 23:03
That brings up another question, which is actually later in the interview, you brought it up? Was there a specific event or situation that you will talk about, and don’t feel any pressure if you don’t want to, that you knew it was time to set yourself free from corporate America and start your own business.
Gabe Hagen 23:27
Oh, I mean, if I’m being fully vulnerable and honest, the there’s a couple of things that led to it. It was partially reconciling what was next for my life. What’s that next major goal part of it was reconciling what impact am I going to leave on this world and what world we are currently living in, which was everybody sitting at home or in isolation from each other, and and trying to figure out what that all entails, and then you mix in a little bit of a really harsh thing called reality, and having to look at yourself and how you’ve shown up for people. I look back at the murder of George Floyd, that was a really tough time, I think, collectively for everybody, but I think the thing that was hard for me was it was the first time I’d been forced to sit with the fact that I’d called myself an ally, kind of called myself a somebody that would advocate for, you know, every type of marginalized community, because I get it, I’m queer, I’m marginalized, so I’m there with you, I understand. I don’t, and that was what I had to reconcile, and that’s what I had to sit with, there’s no amount of lived experience that I have lived that could come close to the reality that people of color and people that just have zero ability to hide who they are have, and so that was a privilege that I didn’t realize how much I was hiding behind, of like, look, I’m a marginalized person too, so clearly I get it. No, I don’t. So reconciling with that, and really having to look deep at how I show up for those I claim to support, really left me, honestly, in a really vulnerable, depressed state. I got far too close to suicide again, and I talk about that openly, because mental health is real, and we have it at all stages of our life, and so I made the decision that I had to do something for me, and I, that’s for me, that was creating community, that was bringing people together, it was getting people to get offline and stop yelling at each other behind a keyboard, where we can’t actually look at somebody, and let’s reconnect with humanity. And so I was like, this might be the dumbest thing I’m ever going to do, but I had to do it. I had to do it for myself, for my own well-being, and to really challenge me every day to keep showing up. And now I’m not perfect. I still fail in a lot of ways, and I still don’t meet the mark of where I should be on a lot of things, but I’m grateful that I built a community around me that now is willing to extend me grace and vulnerability, and show me where I can do better, and tell me where I may have missed the mark, and it has created an ecosystem where I feel like, for the first time in my life, I feel confident in the fact that I’m doing everything I can today to do to be the person that my other humans need us to be, and that’s not to say that I can’t do better tomorrow.
Rosaria Cain 27:03
Wow, that’s a lot.
Gabe Hagen 27:05
It is.
Rosaria Cain 27:05
Do you think we’ve ever overcome this problem of being in front of a screen fully that COVID kind of placed upon everyone? Have we really, and there’s different opinions on this, have we really, have we gotten past that yet, or will we ever get past that? Or is the youth completely damaged forever?
Gabe Hagen 27:29
My optimism is that we will get past it. My optimism is the youth will, they will inspire us in ways we can’t even fathom right now, and they will truly change the trajectory of the future. It’s funny, it sounds so simple and so stupid, but I was talking to somebody. We have an intern right now, they’re in high school, and I was like, well, talk to–
Rosaria Cain 27:54
An intern from high school? Now that’s motivated.
Gabe Hagen 27:57
Yeah, yeah, and thankfully, Tempe, City of Tempe and Career Ready Tempe exists, and so they place high school students with us at no cost to the small business, which is fantastic. So I get
Rosaria Cain 28:08
Great for everybody.
Gabe Hagen 28:09
Yeah, it’s a win-win for everybody, but she was sharing with me, we were talking about just like comedy, and like how, like she was showing me her presentations that she did for class, and I was like, you wouldn’t want to put a GIF on there, or like a little joke, make it a little humorous. She’s like, “Oh no.” I was like, “Why?” She’s like, “Well, then you’re trying to be funny, and then nobody’s gonna think you’re funny, because if you try to be funny, you can’t be funny.” I was like, “Whoa,” that was the matrix in my head, like, what just happened? I was like, “What about comedians?” “Well, they’re funny if they seem like your friend, but they’re not trying to be funny as your friend,”
Rosaria Cain 28:44
Because they’d be trying too hard?
Gabe Hagen 28:45
Yeah, yeah. So, like, I think there’s a generation coming that is going to really,
Rosaria Cain 28:51
That’s sharp.
Gabe Hagen 28:51
Yeah, they’re going to challenge us to
Rosaria Cain 28:53
deep, even
Gabe Hagen 28:54
think about like everything that we think is funny. Is that really humor, or is it just somebody trying to, trying to get a laugh or trying to get something for themselves, so I think in that lens I look at it as these kids are going to push past normal ways of thinking, and so what we would determine as being like, “oh, that’s funny,” it’s going to actually end up being something like, “Is that the way that you should do business?” and they’re challenging us to do better every single day.
Rosaria Cain 29:25
You know that’s amazing.
Gabe Hagen 29:27
Yep.
Rosaria Cain 29:28
So how are you positioning Brick Road Coffee?
Gabe Hagen 29:33
You know, I could give you the corporate answer. We’re two cafes, we’re a wholesale roastery with Prism Coffee Lab. You know, we’re growing through e-commerce, we’re trying to do things from a lens of how we do business and what, what our purpose and mission is, but realistically, I don’t know, I don’t know how I’m positioning it, I think it’s one of those things where I’ve read. A lot of books about how business should be done, and I think there’s value in some, and I think there’s also a lot of value, and a little bit of ignorance, and a lot of audacity, and I think that’s been what’s been our secret sauce, is people said, like you people we love and know, and like our my father-in-law, like, they shared like legitimate concerns when we started, like, “Are you sure you want to be this visibly queer own? Are you scared of scaring customers off?” It’s a legitimate question, and it’s a legitimate concern.
Rosaria Cain 30:36
But you are who you are, right?
Gabe Hagen 30:39
And every, everything in my mind said that is that the right positioning for us, will we ever get off the ground? So I think a lot of it falls back to gut instinct, it falls back to what is the community and the universe telling us is needed, and just trying to do better and not being so stuck in our ways, so our positioning is really: I want to be the best steward of business, so every person that we impact, whether it be our customers, our employees, our coffee growers, the importers. How can I do everything possible to make sure that every one of those lives that touches our business is left better because of us doing business with them?
Rosaria Cain 31:31
That’s a beautiful objective. How’s business?
Gabe Hagen 31:36
Amazing.
Rosaria Cain 31:36
Good. Well, apparently the objective also to have a successful business is being fulfilled as well.
Gabe Hagen 31:42
Yeah, it’s been amazing. I mean, being recognized as 40 under 40. There’s all sorts of awards that we have been recognized for, and those are all fantastic, and there’s all sorts of corporate milestones that you can look at, like our little 1400 square foot non-drive-through shop in a off-street shopping center in Tempe, with no street signage. We never had street signs within three years. We went from being those tiny little nobody to we broke a million in revenue, so like we meet these corporate milestones, but the thing that will always mean the most to me is every time a parent comes out of their way or comes to visit their child while they’re at ASU and goes out of their way to find myself or my husband to basically cry and share about how impactful that space has been on their kid, their kid may have found belonging or found acceptance or saw themselves in a way that they didn’t imagine possible, and that will always be the most valuable sign of success for me, even if I’m losing money every month, because I remember what it was like to be that queer kid growing up in Iowa, and not having a space where I felt like somebody saw me for who I was, not feeling like I had a future because I didn’t see myself in these roles that I thought could be out there for myself, and so I know what it’s like to be at that point where you just feel like, “Is there even anything out there for me?” and so the fact that it’s resonated in a way I hoped it would, because Brick Road is a love letter to my 16 year old self, if you will, that’s the most impactful thing I could ever do.
Rosaria Cain 32:28
So, you don’t really have any competitors.
Gabe Hagen 32:28
I don’t think so.
Rosaria Cain 31:42
Because your position is perfectly branded.
Gabe Hagen 32:28
Well, and I also, and I appreciate that, and I also believe that we don’t need to be competitors. I, I love it when somebody reaches out and says, “I want to do what you’re doing,” Good, let me tell you everything I’ve learned, the good, the bad, the ugly. Let me be a resource for you, because I’m tired and I don’t want to keep doing. It’s a lot of work to open up more shops. I look at this ecosystem from an abundance mentality, is what I have, and I feel like there’s a place for everybody, and I feel like if we look at it from that lens, the things that will unfortunately get weeded out are those that are doing it for the wrong reasons, if they’re doing it for the profit, if they’re doing it for their fifth yacht, if they’re doing it for a spaceship to go to outer space, are those the right reasons to be in business? And I would question the motives, and I think consumers are starting to see that, and I think there’s an intentional shift back towards values alignment, and I say values alignment, because that can mean everybody across the spectrum, everybody has the ability to be seen. It’s knowing where your money is going, and how it’s impacting things. So, I don’t look at other coffee shops as competitors, I look at them as part of this ecosystem, and there are obviously those that are doing remarkable work and filling a void that I could never cover, because I don’t understand that perspective, or not understand, I don’t have that lens to look at life to know how to show up authentically for that community, and so that’s not a competitor, that’s somebody doing the same work I’m doing, but doing it for another set of people that also need it, and I think every person deserves that, and I think the more we build that system… I’m a firm believer in life can be really, really beautiful, and we can have a ton of meeting, and we can be successful, and we have to kind of shift how we value success. So long it’s been on monetary, and I would argue I’m the lowest paid employee at my business, other than my part-timers that work far, far, far, far fewer hours, but I have never felt so rich in my life.
Rosaria Cain 33:14
Have you always been an entrepreneur, or did you develop into one from circumstances?
Gabe Hagen 33:14
I think society told me I needed to go into corporate America, I needed to learn the system, but I think at heart this is what I was meant to do, because I look at it from a different lens, and I think the fact that I didn’t approach my education from, like, I’m going to figure out how to be an entrepreneur, so I can create the next insert website, insert business, here, I went into it with a purpose and with a mission, and coffee is a catalyst. It could be coffee tomorrow, it could be bagels, it could be a yoga studio. Every business can have a purpose beyond the physical thing you’re doing. And how do we tap into showing people what makes us passionate, showing people the world we want to see, so they want to join and support us, and and find ways to build that little bit more perfect world.
Rosaria Cain 38:05
And your purpose is to create a gathering space for those who need it.
Gabe Hagen 38:11
Yep. For people to be seen.
Rosaria Cain 38:12
Not to serve coffee.
Gabe Hagen 38:13
Nope. “Oh yeah, by the way, we serve coffee,” is kind of how I always go about it, like when I’m interviewed on news, it’s like I talk about all the things we do. We hold all these meetups, we do movie nights, we do queer history, we do queer trivia.
Rosaria Cain 38:24
I saw your events calendar.
Gabe Hagen 38:26
It’s full.
Rosaria Cain 38:26
It’s quite, yeah, it’s quite extensive.
Gabe Hagen 38:28
It is full, and it is something that is so inspiring to see, because I think the people that I admire the most are the people that reach out to us to do an event, and they’re the people that reach out to do an event, not for money, not for anything, they just want to hold space, they want to build their little community, that is somebody that A is showing that they are a doer, they are a leader, and you can be a leader at every level of life, of jobs, of work, family, all of this can be true, and those are the most inspiring people, because they’re the ones out there that are like, “You know what? We do need a meet up on every second Thursday,” or I don’t know what the day it is, “where we just get around at a coffee shop, and we just crochet things together, and we’re gonna call it ‘crocheeeey!’ and anybody can sit down and crochet with us.” I love that.
Rosaria Cain 39:14
You could position other people’s businesses and events as well.
Gabe Hagen 39:15
Yeah, and it’s.. it’s not even happening to be a business, that’s literally just passion for crocheting and connecting with people, those are the leaders that I love, because they’re the ones that are are going to find somebody that feels alone and feels left out and feels not seen, and it doesn’t have to be anything beyond just like they have this creative sense, and it is a creative sense and a creative ability, but also sometimes some creative spaces can be very isolating, so finding ways to do that in community is such a powerful thing, that’s that’s a leader to me.
Rosaria Cain 40:15
Going into your personal side,
Gabe Hagen 40:17
Yes.
Rosaria Cain 40:18
What habits make you grounded? What habits and routines keep you at an even keel? Because it sounds like you’ve been working a lot on yourself.
Gabe Hagen 40:29
Yep,
Rosaria Cain 40:29
Mental health being a top requirement for everybody.
Gabe Hagen 40:33
Yes, yeah, it’s for far too long I neglected my mental health, and I think I grew up in a family and in a culture and an environment in the Midwest that looked at mental health from an unserious lens, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, all that stuff. Ah, you’re fine, it’s just a bad day, everybody has bad days. Okay, and so it was heavily stigmatized to me growing up, and so I avoided it, and I struggled deeply with it when I was younger. I obviously battled a lot of bad places. Thankfully, I came out through the other side, but I found myself back in those dark spaces again, and I think as an adult that was my warning sign to do something, and so that was when, in 2020, was when I started therapy again, and I went from all of a sudden not having it to I was doing it twice a week, it was pretty intensive because I was in a really dark spot and I had to kind of crisis response at that point, but I built a system with my therapist and with my husband too, that works for me, and now now we’re on like what I call maintenance doses, we go every few weeks or every month or so, just to check in, make sure everything’s good, and I schedule something. If something goes off the rails, then it’s like, all right, let’s talk this through. I have that thing in my tool belt. I always talk about having this tool belt of ways to navigate society and the world. One of them being therapy. One of them is recently I started going to the gym. I have a personal trainer. I go once a week. I hate it. I hate the gym.
Rosaria Cain 42:23
You do?
Gabe Hagen 42:23
Oh my god, it’s weights. It’s all it’s… it’s 30 minutes of the most miserable thing in the world. And I started going to this gym because they said that they were the gym for people that hate the gym, and I was like, “Perfect, that’s my people,” because I hate the gym. And I show up every day, and I joke now that I’m like, “I hate being here. I don’t want to be here,” because I don’t, but it is something really important about that physical exercise for me. There was a lot of trauma related to gyms and growing up queer, and you know, there’s locker rooms and all that fun stuff, where you just like–
Rosaria Cain 42:56
They’re almost metaphors at this point, right?
Gabe Hagen 42:58
Right. And so there’s, there’s that. I incorporated that back in. That was something I did when we opened the second location. I realized I had buried myself in work. I was working seven days a week, 10 plus hours a day, and I had nothing carved out for myself. So now it’s 30 minutes that I hate, but it’s an intentional 30 minutes that has nothing to do with my business, and it’s 30 minutes where I have to do physical activity, and it’s great. So, it’s like a little mini therapy.
Rosaria Cain 43:29
Do you feel better after you do it?
Gabe Hagen 43:32
Maybe a couple hours later, and then I start getting sore from like weights.
Rosaria Cain 43:37
But doesn’t that feel good?
Gabe Hagen 43:39
Meh.
Rosaria Cain 43:39
Means you did something.
Gabe Hagen 43:40
Yeah. No, no, it is good. It is good. So, there’s that. And then my other habit that I’ve started doing is I read every day. Every day I read before going to bed, or if I can find time, if I’m driving, I really put out an audio book. And since quitting my corporate world and realizing that I was no longer in school, and I could actually read for fun again. I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing.” So now I read up about 100 books a year, and it’s one of my most…
Rosaria Cain 44:09
What types of books do you read?
Gabe Hagen 44:10
Oh, mainly trash.
Rosaria Cain 44:11
Oh, see, I love trash novels.
Gabe Hagen 44:13
I do too. I do too. It’s so great, like,
Rosaria Cain 44:16
Because it’s an escape for me. I don’t read to further educate myself, and I love to do that too.
Gabe Hagen 44:23
I do too.
Rosaria Cain 44:24
But because we do so much of it just in our daily routine, I really like a good trashy read.
Gabe Hagen 44:30
I do too, and like trashy reads can be really well written.
Rosaria Cain 44:34
They can!
Gabe Hagen 44:34
Like, these authors are like impeccable at what they do. I mean, a couple years ago I read this series called Heated Rivalry, and now it’s this major thing, and like that was just one of my trashy reads, but like it was written so well written, like clearly there was a story there. So I read a lot of trashy stuff, but I do also read for self growth and stuff like that. One of the books that I just finished was Unreasonable Hospitality by Will… it starts with a G, I cannot remember his last name. Levin Madison Park is what he started up, I think, is kind of the basis for some of the storyline behind The Bear on Hulu. So, I do read some things that are a little bit more challenging, a little bit more like, but reading is very important to me. It’s an escape. It’s allows me to kind of put off my wary worries.
Rosaria Cain 45:29
You get to be somebody else when you read.
Gabe Hagen 45:31
Right? I can go read about an inn in Vermont, that’s gonna fail because of this mega corporation, and this person on vacation just happens to be the savior of all of it, and they’ll fall off in love, and it’s very tropey and stereotypical and trashy, and I love it.
Rosaria Cain 45:47
Yeah, I’m with you.
Gabe Hagen 45:48
I know where I’m at every point in the book.
Rosaria Cain 45:50
What do you? I think I know the answer, kind of, because you’ve answered it, but what do you want to be known for? Not a coffee, not the best coffee. It doesn’t sound like,
Gabe Hagen 46:01
Oh no, I want that too. I do think we have great coffee. That’s one of the things that I’m having so much fun diving into, is like the science behind coffee. Now I feel like we got the community down, now we’re diving the science behind it. I think if I had the ability to not be known, that would be perfect for me. I don’t need a public persona, kind of comes with this. It’s kind of what our society dictates, so that’s kind of why I’m out here doing, putting myself out here. It’s a very vulnerable space for me. I don’t love being on camera, I don’t love listening to myself, I don’t love any of that, but if it’s going to be for one thing, it’s my hope is that we can create a new society on how we do business, and it can put people first, and I think the joke, it’s not even a joke, but the thing I always say is, if I could have the balance sheet and the P & L’s of a major coffee chain that has a green logo, and I just restructured how their pay was. What could they accomplish? Is there a reason why the 100 people at the top of that business, need to make hundreds of x’s times more than the barista, or is there a way that you can create a corporate culture, I always tell people this, if you had the choice, and you can make six figures being a barista, showing up five days a week just to wake up your community and connect with your neighbor. Would you choose to do it? Some people will say no, but there’s people out there that would say yes, because their passion is creating that moment for their community, and so I feel like if you could take money from the equation of capitalism, from pay, and equalize it, so everybody had that base level, not talking about buying-yacht money, I’m talking about just like you can go through, you can pay your mortgage, you can pay your grocery bills, you can pay for your insurance, you don’t have to worry about going to the doctor, you don’t have to worry about getting a flat tire, that type of money, right at the end of the day, people would gravitate towards what they’re passionate about and what magic could be created if every single person could do what they were passionate about.
Rosaria Cain 48:35
Final question, everything is a final question for you, because it’s all so good. If you were going to write a book on your life, and as an avid reader, you’ve probably thought about this. What would you call it?
Gabe Hagen 48:52
Yeah, it’s that’s hard. I, one of the reasons why I stumbled upon Will’s book is his is called Unreasonable Hospitality. We identified our four core values of our business recently, and the one that I was like, I fell in love with was we defined one as radical hospitality, and so I was researching that, and if anybody else was using it, and that’s how I stumbled upon his book, Unreasonable, and I was like, unreasonable, I don’t like that, and then I read the book, and I was like, okay, I like that, but so that was originally what I was looking at doing with something around that name, but obviously with that book being out there, I don’t know if it makes sense, but I think it could be as simple as like Brewing Community or Brewing Connections, or you know, My Personal Yellow Brick Road, like there’s so many different ways I can go. I think finding true passion takes a lot of bad choices, because you’re going to make the wrong choice a million times, but when you find the direction you’re meant to go. In it’ll it’ll spark and it’ll happen and it’ll hit you and that’s how you’ll know, and I feel like the same thing when it comes to any type of book title. Once I found that thing that was like, this is my mission, this is my purpose, it’ll hit me.
Rosaria Cain 50:15
Radical Hospitality all the way, Gabe. Thank you for spending time with us. This has been great.
Gabe Hagen 50:21
Thank you so much for having me.
Rosaria Cain 50:22
My pleasure.