Our Story · Guadalupe Roastery · Est. 2015
The Man Who Left Finance for the Fields
Brad Fassbender traded a promising career in finance for a mission trip alongside Franciscan friars, and came home carrying one question he could not silence.
There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a person when they encounter poverty up close, not the abstracted poverty of statistics, but the lived reality of families whose labor sustains a global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
Brad Fassbender encountered that silence in the highlands of Latin America. He came home changed.
Before that moment, he had spent his first years out of college in financial services, where performance was measured month by month in production, quotas, and sales metrics. He was helping others pursue financial security through insurance and long-term investment planning — but over time, something began to unsettle him.
The system measured value in returns and growth, but rarely considered the deeper realities behind those numbers — the people, the labor, and the human cost embedded within the markets themselves. He found himself questioning whether what he was building truly reflected the kind of value he believed in.
Drawn by his Catholic faith and a desire to pursue God's will for his life, he joined a mission in Central America that assisted the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in their work.
There, the question became real.
He was doing ordinary things — visiting homes, spending time with families — when he found himself in the middle of a coffee harvest. Wanting to live in deeper solidarity, he joined the harvest as a worker.
He was no stranger to hard labor, having spent his high school and college summers roofing houses. But in the coffee harvest, he discovered something different. No one works harder physically than the men in the wet mill — 10 to 12-hour days of continuous labor, lifting 150-pound sacks of wet coffee beans by hand.
And yet, the contrast was impossible to ignore. Work that would earn him the equivalent of fifteen minutes roofing in the United States required an entire day — ten hours of labor — in the wet mill.
As he worked alongside them, the same story repeated.
These men and women were producing one of the most consumed commodities on earth, yet the wage they received barely sustained their livelihood. Between their hands and the consumer's morning cup stood a system that left them with little of the value they created.
In that moment, the disconnect was undeniable.
"I couldn't find my Catholic values in the coffee market, but I desired to bring them there."
Brad Fassbender · Founder · Guadalupe Roastery
In the coffee regions of Central America, a coyote is a middleman who buys coffee cherries from isolated farmers at whatever price necessity demands. The farmer, lacking transportation and market access, has no choice but to sell to whoever appears at the gate.
The coyote captures the spread between farm-gate and export prices — sometimes tripling their investment — while the farmer receives a price that often fails to cover production costs.
Direct-trade models like Guadalupe Roastery's respond with structural reform: the roaster becomes the buyer, the relationship is direct, the price is transparent, and the premium stays with the person who created the value — the farmer.
Watch · Documentary · 2018
Awake to More — The Franciscan Mission in Latin America
The 2018 documentary featuring the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal — the world Fassbender entered before founding Guadalupe Roastery.
A Vocation Found in Silence
Fassbender did not return from Latin America and immediately found a company. He brought his experience into prayer — specifically, into Eucharistic Adoration. He described the feeling that lingered as an ache: a persistent signal that his encounter with the poor had not reached its conclusion.
"Take this ache to Eucharistic Adoration. Over time, God will give you the idea that He wants you to fulfill for His Kingdom."
Brad Fassbender · FounderGuadalupe Roastery was founded in Florida in 2015, dedicated from its first day to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas. Every supply chain decision begins with one question: what is best for the men and women who grow the beans?
Freshly picked coffee cherries — the fruit of months of cultivation. Guadalupe Roastery pays these families well above Fair Trade prices, directly. Photo: Guadalupe Roastery
Across Church history, major decisions — missionary expeditions, the founding of religious orders — have been shaped by what was heard in Eucharistic silence. The tradition is ancient: sitting before the consecrated host opens a channel of discernment unavailable to the busy, planning mind.
What is unusual about Fassbender's story is that it produced not a monastery but a specialty coffee roaster in Florida, with direct-trade relationships across Latin America.
A reminder that the call to holiness does not always announce itself in obvious forms — and the most practical business decision can carry within it the grammar of a vocation.
"Enjoy Your Coffee. Change the World."
The company's tagline reads like a bumper sticker. In practice, it is a compressed argument about commerce. Fassbender defines the common good with unusual precision: "the sum total of conditions that help people flourish to be who God intended them to be."
His response to the broken supply chain was structural. Eliminate the intermediaries. Go directly to the farming family. Pay a living wage — not as charity, but as the fair price that dignified labor commands. Roast in small batches, ship the same day.
"Coffee is just a way to engage, to hear other people's stories, to share our story — and share the Gospel."
Brad Fassbender · Guadalupe Roastery
Rerum Novarum (1891) — Pope Leo XIII established that workers have a right to just wages, and owners carry obligations exceeding legal minimums.
Centesimus Annus (1991) — John Paul II affirmed that markets must be embedded within a moral framework to serve the common good.
Laudato Si' (2015) — Pope Francis extended CST to creation itself: the ecosystems sustaining agricultural life are part of the moral calculus of any business.
The "Farmer First" model is an attempt to operate according to principles that predate modern capitalism — and that, its founder believes, can outlast it.
Watch · Interview · Guadalupe Roastery
Brad Fassbender — Coffee, Mission, and the Common Good
Brad Fassbender tells the full story — from finance, to the mission field, to a Florida roastery dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Founded in Florida
SCA Score · Top 3%
Days: Roast to Ship
An Act of Consecration
In December 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared four times to Juan Diego — an indigenous man of no standing in colonial New Spain — on Tepeyac Hill. She appeared not as the queen of Europe, but as an indigenous woman, speaking Nahuatl, accompanied by Castilian roses that do not bloom in the Mexican winter. She asked for a church: a place where she could hear the cries of the poor.
To dedicate a coffee company to her is not a branding decision. It is an act of consecration. The company's Tepeyac Edition roast takes its name from that hill — a reminder that this product is a form of theological statement.
The Marian tradition at the heart of Guadalupe Roastery. The company is consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas. Photo: Guadalupe Roastery
When Juan Diego opened his tilma before the bishop, Castilian roses — flowers impossible in a Mexican December — fell to the floor and revealed an image of the Virgin that has survived unchanged for nearly five centuries.
The image speaks the visual language of the Nahuatl people: the Virgin's eyes cast downward, her skin dark, standing on a crescent moon. She is not a European queen — she is something new: a Marian apparition announcing, in the language of the oppressed, that God is with the poor.
For Guadalupe Roastery, this dedication is a statement of allegiance: on the side of the marginalized, the overlooked, the people whose work sustains a world that rarely acknowledges them.
The SCA evaluates coffee on fragrance, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, and uniformity. Scores of 80+ qualify as "specialty." Guadalupe Roastery's range — 82 to 88 — represents the top 3% of all coffee grown on earth.
Most commercial brands don't approach this threshold. Those beans are commodity-grade, roasted dark to mask defects. Specialty coffee is traceable, processed with care, and roasted to express terroir.
Committing to specialty grade means committing to a supply chain transparent enough that quality is even possible — which means the farmers at origin must be partners, not victims.
What We Stand For
The Four Pillars of
Guadalupe Roastery
Not marketing values. Operating constraints — the logic of a company that treats every purchase as a moral act.
01 · Dignity
The Farmer First
Well above Fair Trade prices, paid directly to farming families. Not charity — justice.
02 · Faith
Dedicated to Our Lady
Consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The source of every ethical commitment.
03 · Teaching
Catholic Social Teaching
The common good, solidarity, and the preferential option for the poor — applied as daily logic.
04 · Quality
Specialty Grade Only
SCA 82–88. Roasted the day we ship. Excellence is honesty.
What's Brewing · Our Blog
Further Reading
AwardQuality
The Guadalupe Gold Cup of Excellence
Our annual process for identifying the finest coffees — working with farming families from harvest to cup.
FounderBehind the Scenes
Behind the Scenes of a Family Business
The joys, crosses, and fruits of building a mission-driven coffee company.
CultureFaith & Beauty
Why Beauty Matters — and Why We Made This Film
Of the transcendentals, beauty has the power to disarm the soul.
SourcingFarm to Cup
From Farm to Cup: God's Bounty at Work
Grace builds on nature. Even coffee can point us back to God.
MissionFaith
The Ave Maria Mission
Connecting farmers, families, and prayer communities in solidarity.
FilmEvangelization
The Power of Beauty at Work — GR × Zeale
How a coffee company became a film producer.
Begin Your Own Story
Every cup is a small act
of conscience — and joy.
Join a community of Catholics and coffee lovers who have made Guadalupe Roastery part of their morning ritual and their faith in motion.
Specialty grade only · Roasted the day it ships · Dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe
As featured on Relevant Radio · EWTN · National Catholic Register · Aleteia