Destined to be hospitable
Before the café at Trust opens its doors in downtown St. Louis at 8 a.m., Daisy Hudspeth starts her day early to prepare. She first stops by Good Company, which supplies the pastries each morning, before heading to the café to welcome the day’s customers. From behind the bar, Hudspeth personally greets and assists each customer while making and serving every beverage ordered. She also creates all sauces and syrups in-house and serves each drink in individually hand-stamped cups, also done by her. As the café’s sole operator and barista, Hudspeth wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hudspeth’s history with hospitality began when she was 15, working at the former Stratton’s Cafe in the current Balkan Treat Box space in Webster Groves, though her true passion for it began when she moved to San Francisco to be closer to her grandma, also named Daisy.
With a background in hospitality under her belt, it was no surprise when Hudspeth landed at Spro Coffee Lab for her first barista job. The café operated out of a 16-foot trailer, offering a full food program and a scientific approach to coffee.
Hudspeth recalls learning how to dial coffee using a flavor wheel and trying to extract the most well-rounded – not acidic or bitter – perfectly dark chocolate, stone fruit-type flavor from an espresso shot just by changing the water by one degree or putting in half a gram more coffee grounds.
“It was remarkable. I learned how to make coffee that tasted like the Brookside chocolate-covered acai berries in this tiny little trailer. I made a pour-over that tasted just like that. I started getting really passionate about it, and they made all of their sauces and syrups in-house,” Hudspeth said.
When Hudspeth’s grandma passed, she moved back to St. Louis and bounced around to many different notable restaurants and cafés, such as Olive + Oak, Clover and the Bee and AO&Co.
“I’ve always had this dream of owning, operating and overseeing my own café program where you had these delicious sauces and syrups that help emphasize the flavor of the espresso without being sickeningly sweet and covering up the coffee flavor,” Hudspeth said.
Though that dream would eventually come true, it’d take some time and tears before it did.
A purposeful café
Between the time spent deeply invested in the local hospitality industry and taking over the café at Trust, Hudspeth met and fell in love with her partner, Jordan, and had two sons, ages 4 and 2. It was after their second son was born that Hudspeth experienced severe postpartum depression.
“I was searching for this purpose outside of motherhood and trying to figure out how to be a person outside of just caring for these tiny people while supporting Jordan with Good Hospitality and how rapidly that’s expanding and growing,” Hudspeth said. “I reached this fork in the road where I was like, ‘I need something for me. I need something that fulfills me outside of motherhood and outside of this house. I need something where I can just love on people the way that I always have to get in touch with myself again.’”
It was in August 2025 when Good Hospitality Group was asked to take over the bar program at Trust after establishing a connection through their company, Good Ice, which supplied Trust’s ice cubes. At the time, Good Hospitality didn’t have the café program planned when they acquired the cocktail program.
“When Jordan was like, ‘What if you started the café at Trust?’ it was the first light I had seen in quite some time,” Hudspeth said. “Not to put a lot of pressure on an espresso machine, but the café program here really did save my life. I was in such a dark place before this idea or this opportunity presented itself, and as soon as it did, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to give this everything that I have.’”
In January 2026, Trust opened as café by day, cocktail bar by night and art gallery all the time.
Real ingredients, and a scientific approach
When Hudspeth started planning the vision for the café, she knew she wanted to get as close as she could to the scientific approach to coffee that she learned all those years ago. Equally important to her was emphasizing whole, real ingredients, like real spices, organic cane sugar, local dairy and ingredients that were as unrefined as possible.
“When it comes to sauces and syrups, in a society where everything we eat is covered in plastic and made from chemicals and fake ingredients, I truly believe that you get a better flavor when you’re using what grows naturally from the earth,” Hudspeth said. “With this program, I’ve been able to get as close to that as I can without having top-of-the-line equipment.”
Hudspeth inherited the espresso machine from the last café that occupied the Trust space, which has a broken piece with the replacement on back order. Though they’ve gotten the machine serviced, it only allows Hudspeth to pull one single shot of espresso at a time.
“I sometimes have to jump back and forth, which at times can be difficult, but I’m right where I want to be. I love this so much. I love creating flavors,” Hudspeth said. “My grandma was a huge influence on my life, and she was a fantastic cook. My older brother owns Salt + Smoke, and I’ve always cooked with him. My Aunt Susie taught me how to bake, and my stepmom taught me what a vegetable was and made me really like them. So I’ve always really had a passion for things that taste good.”
The minds behind the menu
Hudspeth draws creative inspiration for new sauces and syrups through a variety of avenues, such as channeling a dessert she’s tried, fixating on buzzwords that sound worthwhile to experiment with or drawing from the tastes of people around her.
The café’s most popular item, the miso butterscotch latte, which Hudspeth refers to as their flagship latte, was inspired by her friend Layla.
“Layla is a scientist, but she’s also this incredible pastry chef, and she kept putting miso in everything. She makes these miso chocolate chip cookies. She made this miso caramel cheesecake and I was just so inspired because I had never really thought about miso that way before. So she really was my inspiration for the miso butterscotch,” Hudspeth said.
Hudspeth opted for a red miso paste, which is the more savory of the two, in order to achieve a balance that perfectly complements the sweetness in the brown sugar that comes from making the butterscotch.
“If it’s somebody’s first time in or they’re from out of town and they don’t know if they’ll ever be back in St. Louis, I always direct them to the miso butterscotch. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take that off the menu without a riot happening in the streets,” Hudspeth said.
Another popular item, the black sesame mocha, was inspired by a request from Greg Haefner, her cocktail counterpart. Hudspeth first experimented with running the drink as a Post-it special before it became popular enough to land a permanent spot on the printed menu.
A newly added menu item was the brown butter peach cold brew, also known as peaches and cream, born from a summer vision and buzzwords swirling in Hudspeth’s mind: fruity, creamy, refreshing. On the pastry front, Good Company recently created a new split pea and potato curry hand pie, which Hudspeth shared “knocked her socks off.” For matcha lovers, Hudspeth also just released a brown sugar cardamom matcha inspired by the flavor preferences of Helen Sayre, the operations manager at Trust.
“If someone comes in and they try something that maybe they’ve never had before and it ends up not being something that they like, I want anyone to tell me that because I will work and figure out what they like and I’ll make it for them. I have so many creative ideas and so many flavors at my fingertips,” Hudspeth said.
From finding herself to being herself
Another thing within Hudspeth’s reach is her front-facing camera, which she uses to film TikTok videos about her life as the café’s barista and operator. Since posting a viral video of her seventh day of owning a café in downtown St. Louis, she’s grown a steady following and posts Hot Take Tuesdays and Wacky Take Wednesdays when she has the time.
“I have pretty severe ADHD and I’m a certified yapper, so sometimes I have all these ideas I need to get out. It’s my outlook on owning and operating a café and me being me,” Hudspeth said. “Some days you’ll get me at home being a mother of two boys, or some days you’ll get, you know, ‘I’m really passionate about portafilters today. Let’s talk about that.’ You’ve got to be yourself sometimes.”
Above anything else, the café has allowed Hudspeth to find herself and return to her purpose of tailoring her love and care for others, and pouring that into everything she does.
“I truly believe my purpose in life is to love people in every single thing that I do, whether that’s listening to a story of something that happened in their day, making them laugh or giving them a really great-tasting latte,” Hudspeth said. “It’s my favorite thing in the world to love on people and give them something that they’ll think about and carry with them throughout their day, whether it’s the moment we share together or the product that I’m handing over.”
A springboard for the future
Aside from looking forward to the constant stream of new, fun and exciting creations landing on the café’s menu, Hudspeth said the café is acting as a springboard for future café operations.
“This isn’t the only café that I’ll ever do, and I’ll allude to that,” Hudspeth said. “Keep your eye on Good Hospitality. We’re doing some crazy things in the next calendar year, and I’m really excited about everything that we’re building.”
The café at Trust is located at 401 Pine St. in St. Louis and is open every Tuesday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.