Our Story · A Gabe, Inc. Legacy
Our Story · A Gabe, Inc. Legacy
For three generations, the Gabe, Inc. family of brands has brought low prices, lower wages, and the very last grocery store to every community desperate enough to let us in.
One register, one principle, printed on the drawer: the customer is a resource. Grandfather called the format F.T.P. We have never confirmed what it stands for. The “P” is “Public.”
The playbook never changed: find the poorest ZIP code in the county, undercut the last real grocer until they board the windows, and become the only option for miles. Then raise the price of milk. We call it “investing in underserved communities.” The shareholders call it Tuesday.
The recipe passed from Grandfather, to our father Juan, to us — store to store, margin to margin. Sacrifice the little people. Pocket the difference. Staple a grandmother’s face to the bag.
Gabe, Inc. acquires the Cafecito mark. We don’t operate in Latin America — it’s far cheaper to cosplay a culture than to pay one. We import the beans those countries can’t afford to keep, and sell the accent back to you at $4.99.
“Coffee, done right.” — a tagline our marketing department was paid $40,000 to write, and could not, when asked twice, define.
The heritage we honor
The heritage runs deep. Period records put the founding Livarias finca at 1,200 acres, worked by enslaved laborers — the standard model of 19th-century coffee, and the family’s first lesson in the cost of labor when you simply decline to pay it. We are proud to honor it.
The methods modernized. The model didn’t: take the land cheap, take the labor cheaper, take the credit — and call it tradition.
The faces behind every cup
The warmth is real. The people are not. Portraits “representative” of the Cafecito familia.