At Oakland’s Friends and Family, Blake Cole Delivers Hospitality for All

For Blake Cole, owner of Friends and Family (2022 James Beard semifinalist and 50 Best Bar North America), queer hospitality doesn’t involve hanging a rainbow flag on the door of a business or encouraging the use of pronoun pins. Rather, it’s about consistently treating members of the queer community with the same respect, attention, and service that cisgender, heteronormative patrons would be expected to receive—something Cole didn’t witness or experience frequently during her years in the service industry.

A Space for Everyone

A longtime member of the San Francisco restaurant world, Cole opened the bar Friends and Family in Oakland in 2020. Her intention was to serve a broader demographic than what she grew up working with during her career. “The huge driving force for me wanting to open my own place is that I have worked for a lot of men, and some great men, and some pretty horrible men. And I’ve worked in so many situations that have highlighted what we do in the hospitality industry to cater to a certain type of person,” she says. “I wanted the antithesis of that.”

At the time of opening (a venture three years in the making), Cole was coming to terms with her own queer identity, which unintentionally began to influence the final plan for Friends and Family. “The bar is so personal to me that subconsciously or consciously, the things and choices I was making were also very reflective of what I was going through in my life,” she explains. Ultimately, Friends and Family ended up with a mostly queer-identifying staff, resulting in a space that communities across Oakland embraced. 

Unlearning the Service Norms

“The bar is so personal to me that subconsciously or consciously, the things and choices I was making were also very reflective of what I was going through in my life.” —Blake Cole

Cole emphasizes how Friends and Family isn’t decorated a certain way and doesn’t cater exclusively to the LGBTQ+ community. It’s the subtle details in service and attitude, she notes, that make it a welcoming space for everyone. “It’s always been a priority for us to have our language in check, how we refer to guests, how we acknowledge people, no gendered language,” she says. For example, the staff avoids referring to guests with terms like “ladies,” “brothers,” and “dudes.”

Friends and Family also refrains from calling guests by the first names listed on their IDs when checking their ages, acknowledging that they might prefer another name. From presenting the check to the male at the table to suggesting stemmed-glass drinks to women, “there are so many things that I’ve been taught from day one,” Cole says of her time in the service industry. “Things that I am still trying to actively unlearn.”

Events for Everyone

Friends and Family also showcases queer hospitality through actions that go beyond daily service. The bar hosts a packed roster of events and special occasions that cater to the greater community. They also host queer storytelling nights and try to broaden standard yet specific calendar holidays to celebrations that everyone can be a part of. “Some queer people aren’t able to go home during winter holidays, so we hosted a Christmas prom that everyone could dress up for and feel special,” she recalls of a past event. 

“I think it’s funny because we always need things to fit into a box for us to make sense of it. And I think this whole idea is to get rid of the box.” —Blake Cole

The bar is also in the midst of a queer speed dating tour, inspired by post-pandemic efforts to bring people together in person again. “The whole idea was really to just put people together in a room and help facilitate conversation,” Cole says. “Inherently, because this is under the queer umbrella—a massive broad umbrella—we’re not going by gender or separating groups out. So it’s just a get-to-know-you opportunity without binary borders. It’s a mixer that we help facilitate for everybody.”

A Queer Haven, Beautified

There are, however, design elements of Friends and Family that Cole feels the queer community should get to experience. Recognizing the dive bar as a haven for this group, she uses the elevated aesthetic of Friends and Family to suggest that their patrons deserve more than a dive bar’s typically unrefined interiors, pointing out how “there haven’t been a lot of places where [queer] people get to feel the same quality of a nice cocktail bar with hospitality standards, but they are just as worthy of that as anybody else is.” Cole’s cocktail program features classic cocktails relabeled with fun, nostalgic names that nod to the Blake family’s favorite drinks, like “Grandma’s Standard,” a dry Martini, and “Mom’s Rosy Cheeks,” a Gimlet.

Unassuming Identities

While Cole recognizes that Friends and Family has become a queer-centric space, she doesn’t label it a queer bar. “I think it’s funny because we always need things to fit into a box for us to make sense of it. And I think this whole idea is to get rid of the box,” she says. Unassuming of identities, she says she has no idea what the general demographic of her bar is, which she says is a beautiful thing. “It really is everybody. I don’t know how people identify and I’m not going to assume. … What I love is that when a new person walks into our space, they feel comfortable. And that has so much to do with our amazing, understanding clientele.”