Haley Popp, owner of Hive Bakery in Flower Mound, has a message for the haters who’ve threatened to boycott her business over her outspoken support for progressive causes and criticism of the current administration: “I don’t fucking want bigots in my bakery, so I’m thankful for how all of this has turned out. I could not give two shits about all the heat that we get” (Photo by Mia Silvertooth)
STEVEN LINDSEY | Contributing Writer
stevencraiglindsey@gmail.com
As marketing, memes and mainstream messaging taught us during the COVID-19 pandemic, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes, in fact, they wear aprons.
Baker, cake artist, business owner and two-time Food Network champion Haley Popp simply wanted to serve tasty treats to the people of Flower Mound when she opened Hive Bakery in 2016. Yet almost immediately, some of her pastries unleashed legions of thin-skinned Karens eager to destroy her reputation — all because of a Pride cupcake or pro-immigrant cookie.
Fast-forward to a June 30 Facebook post.
The message, in part, read, “We’re not feeling patriotic. The 4th of July seems ridiculous given the state of the country. We’ve never been more embarrassed of what America has become. We will be open this 4th, fully stocked with plenty of desserts, but please forgive our non-festive attitudes as we sift through the ashes of the country we once were.”
It was accompanied by a gorgeous photo of a delectable piece of cheesecake layered with red raspberries, white cream and blueberries that, without the text, would be the epitome of patriotic.
The backlash was almost immediate. Hateful phone calls, death threats, right-wing activist rallying cries and nasty comments came flooding in, mostly by phone and in comments on her social media accounts.
Not one to back down, Popp posted videos of her answering phone calls, one after the other, and dressing down her detractors. Online, she screen-captured the toxic comments and superimposed them on more photos of delicious-looking confections.
On July 4, Popp doubled down with a photo of sugar cookies featuring an upside-down American flag and bold, all-caps text reading, “UNDER DISTRESS,” along with a thank-you to the hordes of people who lined up around the building to show their support
As a fierce ally of the LGBTQ+ community with several employees identifying as queer, Popp never set out to become famous, or even the loudest voice in the room speaking up for anyone who’s ever been marginalized. But as her story has reached the farthest corners of the globe, a new champion of justice has emerged: part folk hero, part First Amendment crusader, part baker extraordinaire.
Add those all up and Haley Popp is nothing short of 100 percent badass.
Dallas Voice caught up with her last week for a lively, profanity-laden, 40-minute interview with one person we could all use in our corner right now.
Dallas Voice: Well, first things first, just kind of a little history of the bakery. How did you come up with the name Hive Bakery for your business? Haley Popp: I take, like, amateur macro photography, and when I was getting ready to open this bakery, I was trying to figure out what the fuck to name it. And as I was like photographing shit, it was, like, oh my god! Without bees, literally none of this shit exists.
Like, pollination creates food. Food is how I now make a living. So the origin of what we bake is the bee.
Why Flower Mound? We moved here with my husband’s job. Set up roots. My kids are in school here, and you know, I didn’t want to open outside where I lived because I needed easy access to be able to pick up my kids from school and shit.
Flower Mound has a conservative reputation, so do you think your location has had more of an impact than if you were in a “bluer neighborhood,” like Oak Lawn, Uptown or Oak Cliff? Flower Mound is definitely more red than blue. However, I will say we have found our people here, and there’s shockingly a lot of blue dots here. I think most people just stay quiet, so they don’t know that like-minded individuals exist here. But you know, like a lot of our town council members lean more liberal.
I see a shift in Texas politics. It is red here. But I would say that the blue dots are super plentiful. I feel like maybe we would have found our community a lot faster in Oak Lawn or somewhere like that, but I don’t know.
We receive hate literally from across the country, so I feel like maybe it doesn’t matter where we were. We would always be doxed by Libs of TikTok and shared on Fox News. It was just kind of our destiny. I think because I have a loud mouth, I’m authentic, and I don’t care. I just don’t give a fuck.
Long before Hive Bakery became a target for right-wingers, the bakery and its owner were famous for their award-winning food (Photos by Mia Silvertooth)
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The videos of you reading the letters of support from people sending you cash and checks — it’s kind of cool to see that with as much hate as there’s been, there’s so much positive. Does the positive outweigh the negative? The positive certainly outweighs the negative. We are a wildly successful restaurant business at a time when people are folding left and right, and I can only credit that to the people that surround us — all of our patrons, our fans, our customers. I mean, it is why we are such a success.
I think a lot of business owners are afraid if they speak out, if they tell their truths, they’re afraid of losing business, losing their livelihood. But you know, we actually had the opposite.
We found our community. People flock here because they know it’s a safe space, and I’m so thankful that that’s how we’re known.
You know, I don’t fucking want bigots in my bakery, so I’m thankful for how all of this has turned out. I could not give two shits about all the heat that we get.
That’s pretty amazing, especially because this kind of buzzy stuff often makes the news, becomes a big trendy thing, then the hype dies down pretty quickly. But you’ve seemed to sustain the momentum all these weeks later. I think a lot of people fail to realize that prior to all of this, we had over 150,000 followers. We have won multiple Food Network awards. We have always sold out every day. So this just really ramped up our already ongoing success.
A lot of MAGA like to say, “Oh, it’s a flash in the pan. You’re gonna go fucking broke once the lines are gone.” Honey, there ain’t never a fucking slow day in this bakery. We are always selling out. So no, these little boosts of social media presence are always welcome.
We love that we find more people because, ultimately, with the hate comes the love, and we’ve accrued another 100,000 followers. I’ve got celebrities reaching out and shit, and so the notoriety comes with being outspoken and liberal and standing up for people of color and the queer community and women.
Like, I want to be known for those things, so if they think it makes me a bad person, I don’t fucking want them here.
Exactly. You’ve posted videos of people lining up around the block in this horrible heat and waiting a long time, but it seems more like a party. Some of your neighboring businesses are having to deal with your lines blocking their entrances, but they’re probably all getting a boost, too, right? Prior to us moving in, this area was literally known as “Parker Square, the place businesses come to die.” I’m not even kidding you. We breathed life back into this square. We are the reason that people travel from other states to come here. Certainly, our neighboring businesses are benefiting from us.
A few are a little bit up in arms because of long lines blocking doors and things, and that’s understandable. But for the most part, we’re helping businesses in the square, and I think they’re happy to see it.
You’ve gotten a lot of news coverage. What has been the most surprising? So, we were interviewed by a newspaper in Finland. I think another one in Canada, and I have people from Australia telling us that we made their news. So it’s international.
Wow. Have you met a lot of people who’ve come in from far away? Literally every day, I’m taking photos and holding babies. People are traveling from states away. It’s kind of crazy to understand the gravity of your words on social media, how using your platform can really kind of transform a movement, because I feel like that’s what is necessary right now.
And so I feel like we’ve created this little mini revolution of just ordinary people like trying to make a difference. I just went to the Pacific Northwest on a little mini trip, and I was recognized like a dozen times just walking around.
You’d think people would’ve recognized you more after your Food Network appearances, but you can’t control celebrity or fame. Well, I also have a podcast with my family. It’s called The Necessary Conversations, and you can watch it on YouTube. My liberal brother and I speak with our MAGA parents about politics, and the following from that is immense.
So, if I’m not recognized from the bakery, it’s from the pod. And I certainly did not set out to become a celebrity. I didn’t even think about fame. All of this has really hit, I would say, in the last couple of years. But I can’t go anywhere now without being recognized. I mean, I’ve been in New York City at a fucking restaurant in a little borough of Little Italy, and somebody came to my table and was like, “Holy shit, I love your podcast!” That’s fucking wild, you know?
You know you’ve kind of, like it or not, become a folk hero of sorts for a lot of people that maybe aren’t as brave as you or have such a tough skin. Watching you respond to the people that are calling to trash you and responding with humor is probably catching them off guard. I grew up with an ultra-MAGA conservative father. There’s nothing that anyone out in this world can say to me that I haven’t already heard. Nothing can hurt me, and so I think this particular scenario takes a very specific kind of person.
You have to be really thick-skinned. You have to not give a fuck what people think of you, because every day I’m inundated with “You’re a fat, ugly whore. I hope your business burns down. You don’t deserve to be alive.” None of that shit bothers me.
I’ll fucking rise to the occasion because I know some people are afraid, But I don’t fucking care.
Your controversial days date back long before this, maybe with some of your Pride goods? We’ve already experienced this. I would say, honestly, since opening, it was maybe the first Pride that we started running rainbow products, and we were getting all kinds of slurs and hate for that. So, it really has been happening my entire career because I am so outspoken. So this is kind of old news for us.
I had no idea that what I posted was going to go viral. I never set out to do that. There is no expectation. I’m literally just posting what I’m thinking. So I came to work on my day off, and the phone was ringing off the hook. This is right after I posted the Fourth of July bullshit. The phone is ringing off the hook, and I was like, “This is weird. The last time this happened, Libs of TikTok shared some of our shit.” So I get on my phone and I start Sherlocking. What the hell’s going on? And there it was. They shared us. They doxed us. It’s all over the fucking internet, and the conservative right just ran with it, thinking that they were going to shut us down.
And we’ve had lines out the fucking door for an entire month.
Is there any one comment that stands out as so wildly crazy, dumb, or unintentionally funny that you know they were trying to get at you, and it was just completely the opposite? I don’t know. One lady said something about “You need to respect the United States of America. It’s the country that birthed you.” We all got a really good chuckle out of that because, you know, it’s just nonsensical. It’s very clear that none of you read books; none of you understand how the world works, and so it’s like fighting with kindergarteners.
How is your staff dealing with this kind of attention? Maybe they don’t have the same tough skin. How do you help them cope with all this? When we were being inundated with just phone call after terrible phone call, I made sure to answer the phone 100 percent of the time. I don’t want to put this shit on my team, but at one point, they all were like, “You know what? Fuck it! Give me that phone!” So everybody was taking their shot at it and getting it out of their systems. They all took it in stride.
I’m super fortunate that I have collected this group of people who believe in me. They believe in what we stand for. We’re all very like-minded, and I think they’re just grateful that they get to work in an environment where you can do shit like answer a phone and cuss somebody out.
I read somewhere that you haven’t considered a second location because your staff is so important in the success of the business. Yeah, that’s true. We have one year left on our lease here, and then we’re fucking leaving. I’m trying to do something much bigger. We’re trying to look for a bigger space, and so we are going to expand. But it will still just be the one Hive.
My goal is, maybe in a couple of years, to open a second one, but it’s imperative to me that I’m always involved. I will never franchise. I will never fucking sell out. It’s always going to be owned by me, run by me. I want to know everybody, the ins and outs. Your team is essentially your loss or your success, and so I just have this incredible group of people, and I hope if we open a second one, I can find another team that’s equally exceptional.
OK, the focus has all been on the controversies to this point of the interview. But what got you excited about baking? What are your favorite things to bake? What are some of the items that a new customer should order to kind of get a sense of like what your point of view is? First and foremost, I really opened this because I’m an artist. I went to school for apparel design, and I dabble in pottery and fucking oil painting. Cake is just another medium.
Our custom cakes are kind of our claim to fame. We make these incredible custom cakes that are multimedia. I have one other cake decorator who I design everything with, and we used to tag-team every cake. But she’s taking a little bit more of a forefront role now.
All of our cakes are one of a kind. Literally, we don’t recreate things. We don’t copy things from the internet. It all comes from our own brains, our own hands. I’m really proud of that.
Also, people don’t understand from photos how big all of our baked goods are. Our oatmeal cream pie is literally four servings. We make cinnamon rolls that are over a pound, so when you buy something here, you’re practically taking home a meal. Everything that we make is, in my opinion, exceptional. We do everything from scratch. Most of my bakers are pastry chefs, classically trained. They know how to make shit happen, and I’m just truly grateful that I found all these amazing bakers.
So, if you’re coming in for the first time, we make a gluten-free vegan brownie that’s a fan favorite. You wouldn’t know it’s gluten-free or vegan, and everybody loves it. Our oatmeal cream pies are easily our bestseller. We have 10 different varieties of cupcakes daily, and they sell out. Anything from s’mores and lemon lavender to Death by Chocolate and pistachio-rose. I pride myself on interesting flavor combinations, not generic vanilla and chocolate. We have something a little bit more special here.
This momentum is likely to continue through the midterms. Do you have any plans for any victory pastries if things go the way we hope they will? I mean, always as we get closer, we will definitely be running Gina Hinojosa and James Talerico cookies, maybe some for the guy running against Brandon Gill — like fuck Brandon Gill.
Is there a way people can support you that can’t make it to Flower Mound to the bakery in person? I know there’s a button where people can give money on the website. Is anything earmarked for appropriate nonprofit organizations? Every couple of months, we will run cookies or merch or something with a message, and we will certainly donate a percentage of those profits to an organization. I like to choose when and who we do that for. Like most recently, we worked with a local church that needed support, and I did clarify that they were allies. I won’t ever work with anybody that does not align with me. Let me just start out by saying that.
It just depends on how busy our schedule is. When we have lines wrapped around the building, I cannot add to that. We’re barely floating as it is, but when we have a little bit of downtime, we run those products, and we donate a percentage. We’ve donated to Planned Parenthood and various LGBTQ+ community events and charities. We’ve donated to groups when L.A. had those wildfires.
Is there a final message you want to send to either your supporters and/or your critics? Yeah, haters can suck my dick. And to all of our fans, we are eternally grateful. We are here because of them. I am eternally grateful that we found them. My hope is that this only continues to grow because I believe that revolutions start with the small people like us.
Hive Bakery is located at 360 Parker Square Road, Flower Mound. Visit the website at HiveBakeryTx.com.