Life & Work with Brian Hicks

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Hicks. 

Hi Brian, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
In 2007 my wife Courtney and I started a nonprofit organization called Harvest Hands Community Development Corporation in South Nashville specifically focused on partnering with our neighbors and neighborhood for wholeness. The four primary areas of our work included healthy living, education, spiritual formation, and economic development.

We were informed at a neighborhood association meeting about an old crack house that was abandoned and someone said to us at the meeting, “If you all want to do something in this neighborhood to partner with us…. you all should do something about the crack house…some folks have died up there and kids are afraid of that place.” So, in the summer of 2007 in partnership with a mentor, Rev. Dr. Howard Olds, and Brentwood United Methodist Church we bought a crack house on a 2-acre lot for $250,000 (overlooking the fairgrounds). Since the house was condemned, we had to tear it down and on that same lot we held The Harvest Festival and the only price of admission was that folks had to fill out a survey about their community.

The overwhelming response from the survey was that folks loved their community but they felt that crime was an issue and that kids needed, “something to do after school to stay out of trouble.” In response to the request of neighbors, we started an after-school program. We bought a little house someone moved into our neighborhood from Green Hills (so they could build a giant new home on the lot).

We began with 15 elementary-aged kids and realized that if we were going to connect with teenagers, traditional after-school programs wouldn’t cut it—so Courtney and I agreed that we needed to find a way to pay students so they could earn money through a positive outlet and “stay out of trouble” after school.

Courtney and a neighbor, Jael Fuentes, began teaching 3 young women how to make handmade soap and I started teaching 3 young men to roast coffee (my wife had given me a home roaster for Christmas and I was into hobby roasting). It didn’t take long for the young women to make money by selling their soap at local craft shows but my six-ounce roaster wasn’t producing enough coffee for us to actually run a business. All the young men threatened to quit, so I asked them to give me a month before they left.

A friend of mine, Dr. David Bratton, introduced me to Cal Turner, Jr. (the former CEO of Dollar General and head of the Cal Turner Family Foundation) over the next month. Cal told me that he would purchase a commercial coffee roaster and pay for training if I wrote a business plan with the young men and presented it to him. I quickly realized that my master’s degree in theology had not prepared me to write my first business plan with a bunch of teenagers to be presented to the former CEO of Dollar General.

We went to work creating our plan and a month later we presented it to Mr. Turner and he only had one request, he said, “I will buy the roaster but you have to change your name–It is the worst coffee company name I’ve ever heard! It sounds like imitation coffee.” Our mentoring program was called M.I.M.I.C. which stood for Men In Mentoring In Community. The students wanted to name our coffee company MIMIC Coffee Company. The students agreed to the request and voted to change the name to Humphreys Street Coffee Co. to honor the old United Methodist Church that gave us their building for our program.

In the fall of 2009, I took a 13-year-old student named Ruben Torres-Fuentes across the country to Sandpoint Idaho to learn to roast coffee from Stephan Diedrich (the inventor of our Diedrich Coffee Roaster). We began our roasting company in 2009 and today that 13-year kid is 25 and runs the entire roasting operation with sales over $200,000 per year in coffee.

We currently employ over 20 young adults and students at both the coffee roasting facility (behind the Napier-Sudekum government housing) and we opened a coffee shop in Wedgewood Houston (in our former program space, the old Humphreys Street Church building) in 2018 which generates over $500,000 in revenue per year. In the fall of 2021, we will open our second location at 6th and Broadway and create an additional 10 jobs for students by opening our new location.

Through the years we have refined our mission at Humphreys Street–but simply put, we exist to employ and empower youth in order to create jobs, develop leaders, and create pathways out of poverty. This dream has become a reality because we have worked alongside our neighbors for change and wholeness in our own community.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road but it has been an amazing journey!

Somewhere around 2015, our neighborhood went into redevelopment overdrive and many of the students that we served could no longer afford to live in our community. As one mother told us, “The landlord wants to double our rent starting next month and we have to move to Antioch” and another grandmother said, “Our landlord is selling our home and apparently they are going to build two tall and skinny looking houses on our lot.” We faced a difficult decision–either we were going to have to follow our families and move to Antioch or figure out how to serve under-resourced students in South Nashville but in another location.

We recognized that the Napier-Sudekum government housing neighborhood was the least likely place to gentrify. We began the search for a space that we could convert into a community center that would serve the needs of our students.

Gentrification forced many of our students out of the neighborhood—so we asked ourselves the question, how can we turn gentrification into justice? How can we use the same market force that pushed our kids out of the neighborhood to benefit the under-resourced students that remained?

We found an abandoned building that spanned an entire block behind the government housing. Nearly 10 years after purchasing the crack house we were able to work a deal with a buyer to purchase the 2-acre lot from us for nearly ten times the amount that we paid for it in 2007. The market had changed our kid’s neighborhood and we decided that we should use that same change to benefit those who had been pushed out—even to the dismay of the councilman of our district (whose opposition to the deal caused us to lose nearly $200,000 that could have benefited the kids of the community). The proceeds from selling the old crack house lot allowed us to renovate the building in Napier-Sudekum.

We completed the renovation of our community center in Napier-Sudekum in 2016 and moved all our after-school programming into the new space that fall.

We kept the Humphreys Street building and dreamed that one day–the new neighbors would buy coffee in the space from students who could no longer afford to live there—again turning gentrification into justice. We realized that that our new neighbors were not necessarily our enemies but could be potential partners for good in the lives of our students.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am Co-Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Harvest Hands and the CEO of Humphreys Street Coffee and Soap.

I have a master’s degree in Theology with an emphasis in Community Development and I’m an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church. My work over the past fifteen years has been creating a community development organization that intentionally partners with our neighbors and neighborhood to bring about transformative change–by developing local leaders and creating pathways out of poverty.

In many ways, I’m an entrepreneur that was leading a social enterprise before I even knew that the term social enterprise existed. We created Humphreys Street Coffee and Soap not because we were trying to create a social enterprise but because our neighbors communicated that the teenagers needed something to do after school so they didn’t get into trouble.

Through the years my work experience has forced me to learn how to use real estate development to benefit others and to use business as a tool to create pathways out of poverty.

Ultimately–I am most proud of the fact that over the last 15 years my family and I have walked alongside our neighbors (we have intentionally made south Nashville not just the place we work but our home as well) to create an organization and movement that empowers families and students to be empowered, to have meaningful and well-paying work, and to remind our students and families of their inherent dignity and potential. We have never been anyone’s savior–we are partners with our neighbors–on a journey together for wholeness in south Nashville.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Listen. Listen. Listen.

Do not assume that you know all the answers or have all the solutions.

Typically, those closest to a problem will have the best solution (i.e., something for kids to do after school to stay out of trouble).

Don’t do things for people–do things with people.

I wish I knew when I was starting out how much our neighborhood (and Nashville) was going to change–I would have bought every piece of property that was for sale and figured out how to utilize it for good.

However, since I can’t go back in time–I would encourage folks to figure out what resources they have (both financially and relationally) and utilize those in ways that bring about good in the life of others.

I would also say—partnerships and people matter the most.

You cannot do this work alone—none of our work would have been possible without folks who invested in the work through donations and gifts. None of the work of Harvest Hands/Humphreys Street would have been possible without a committed team of staff and volunteers. To truly make a difference in a community you need to be invested for the long haul and 15 years later—we are just getting started.

Finally—there is a poem that my hero John M. Perkins often quotes and I will share it with you:

Go to the people
Live among them
Learn from them
Start with what they know
Build on what they have:
But of the best leaders
When their task is done
The people will remark
“We have done it ourselves.”
-Author unknown

Pricing:

• Coffee ranges from $14-$22 per bag
• Bar Soap $6
• Liquid Hand Soap $14
• Shirts $20
• Coffee Shop Menu online

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.harvesthandscdc.com and www.humphreysstreet.com
• Instagram: humphreysstreet and harvesthands
• Facebook: Harvest Hands Community Development Corp and Humphreys Street
• YouTube: harvesthandscdc
• Yelp: Humphreys Str

Image Credits
Jeremy Cowart
Derik Burrows