Starting a business with your romantic partner of six months may seem like a bad idea to most people, but it worked out for Brooke Rosen and Caleb von Radugge. The couple co-owns House of Walking Life, a multidimensional tea house where customers can not only sip drinks but participate in guided meditations, tea workshops, and astrology readings.
Rosen has been fantasizing about this space since she was a little girl.
“I just wanted to open a magical house on the edge of a downtown somewhere, where all the rooms were kind of like a different experience,” Rosen said. “Then that dream kind of grew and evolved as I went through yoga teacher training and massage school, and I became more spiritually inclined. So it’s kind of like a combination of art and spirituality.”
Rosen and von Radugge met in Gainesville through mutual friends and immediately began dating. When she came to him with the idea early in their relationship, von Radugge said he felt no fear, but did have some concerns.
“I didn’t want her to feel like I was just shoehorning my way into the entirety of her life,” he said. “But I was really excited to see it happen, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
Rosen carried the opposite worries.
“I didn’t want to impose my life on him, or take over his life with my dream,” she said.
Despite this, the two were driven by passion and jumped into the project with full faith. But the road wasn’t easy – the building itself was a 1907 residential home and would unknowingly become a huge logistical burden. A never-ending list of permits and building codes delayed the opening because they had to lift and level the house, build wheelchair ramps, and widen doorways.
After their final inspection, the couple felt pure excitement.
“We made our first matcha lattes, and then we drove up to North Carolina to celebrate,” Rosen said. “Then we were like, wait, we have to go back like immediately and take care of it.”
The name “House of Waking Life” came naturally. The 2001 surrealist animated film about lucid dreaming, “Waking Life,” was serendipitously both Rosen and von Radugge’s favorite movie before they even met. The acronym HOWL then represents “the calling of the soul,” Rosen said. This also connects to their tagline: “…is this a dream?”
Each room is intricately designed, down to the bathroom filled with art easels, blue lights, and black swirls. Rosen said she went for an earthy, cozy vibe with a hint of antique surrealism. A variety of visionary prints hang around the teahouse, adding a pop of color to the cream-colored walls.
Rosen even created some of the paintings and decorations herself, while von Radugge crafted countless pieces of furniture. The bar, tables, and flooring are just a few examples.
Von Radugge mostly handles the operational side, including running the bar and dealing with customers. Rosen will help make drinks when it’s busy, but she prefers to hide away in her office to work on events, communications, and programming. For instance, Rosen does biodynamic cranial touch—a type of touch therapy—and astrology readings at HOWL, and von Radugge does tea education.
Their combined skills are a large part of what makes HOWL so successful.
“We’ve had a very high degree of compatibility, especially on an intellectual and creative level, where we naturally kind of sync up and align with our general visions and our ethics and our values,” von Radugge said. “We have complementary strengths, like I cannot do what she does, and there are things that I do that only I can do.”
The two admitted that working together naturally creates additional challenges in their relationship. They practically do everything together from the moment they wake up to the moment their heads hit the pillow. However, this harmony allows them to navigate both their business and their relationship well.
For example, creating menu items is essentially them playing around with different fun ideas.
“There were a couple of drinks on the menu that came to me in a dream where I literally just woke up, and I was like, ‘these ingredients,’ but mostly we just mess around,” von Radugge said. “The more things we make, the easier it is to make other things as we understand proportions and sweetness.”
Beyond the advertised drinks, around 100 teas sit in the back on a secret menu for regulars. Of them all, they’re most proud of Purple Rain, an effervescent combination of everspring oolong, jiaogulan, kombucha, and house-made butterfly pea syrup that colors the drink a beautiful purple.
HOWL first opened in January 2020, but closed due to COVID and didn’t reopen until May 2021. After almost five years of operating, HOWL has evolved as both a business and a community space.
“I feel like the initial vision was when people walk in the door, they’re confronted with something that breaks their default world script,” von Radugge said.
What started as an attempt to wake people out of autopilot grew into something warmer—a cozy place where customers can hang out with their friends. To many people, HOWL is known as “Gainesville’s living room.”
“Some people move around the space a lot, and some people have their dedicated spot every time they come; that’s the spot they want to go to,” von Radugge said. “And so we kind of leaned into that homey, comforting, welcoming sanctuary.”
Von Radugge used to be very introverted, but now feels more integrated into the community because of HOWL and his daily interactions with customers. Rosen also said she feels deeply fulfilled by “the magic of getting to observe and experience the flowering of life.”
“People are bringing life into the space, and the space is holding some kind of magic,” she said, “and I’m not doing either of those things.”
Besides speaking with Rosen and von Radugge, I also got the chance to experience the magical environment firsthand and try some of the drinks for myself.
You can ask for recommendations based on what you’re in the mood for, and drinks are also customizable. I asked for something that was warm, milky, had little or no caffeine, and was on the sweeter end. The result was the Just Dandy, which is made from roasted dandelion root, chicory cinnamon, oat milk, and simple syrup.
The drink tasted like a cinnamon graham cracker. Underneath the foamy topping lay a sweetness that instilled a warm, fuzzy feeling in my core. I could picture myself cuddling up with a good book while drinking it.
The second drink I tried offered a refreshing palate reset. The Agua de Florida was at the opposite end of the spectrum—a cold, fizzy drink brimming with flavor. It contains rose, raspberry leaf, ginger and hibiscus kombucha, and house-made lavender simple syrup.
I enjoyed both but preferred the Just Dandy because of the more subdued, relaxing flavors.
HOWL is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm. You can find the tea house at 109 SE 4th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601. Due to the small team, they will be closing for the summer, so make sure to stop by before June 15th or add it to your foodie bucket list for the fall!