It’s become something of a running joke between two business partners who started in residential real estate and now operate food and fitness businesses.

Every time their landlord puts a new lease offer in front of them, one of them says the same thing: we should buy the building.

“We haven’t yet,” said Stacie Staub, 51. “But I wish we owned it.”

On a stretch of Youngfield Street in a Lakewood strip mall, Staub and Madie Linder have built a collection of businesses: a real estate brokerage, a mortgage lending office, a coffee shop, a full-service restaurant and bar and a Pilates studio.

That instinct — to claim every open storefront before someone else does — is the thread running through everything Staub and Linder have built together.

It started in 2017, when the pair opened West + Main Homes and decided to include a storefront, a bet that real estate agents didn’t need to be “stuck in an office building somewhere.”

“We wanted to give agents a place where people could walk in,” Staub said. “When spots became vacant, we let the landlord know: we wanted every one that opened up.”

That single decision — to occupy real, visible neighborhood storefronts instead of a back-office suite — became the blueprint for a company that now generates more than $1 billion in volume annually.

But it turned out to be more than a real estate strategy. It became the backbone of their growing business empire.

Both women are Colorado natives. Staub grew up in Arvada, attended Pomona High School, and earned her master’s from the University of Colorado Denver. Linder, from Gunnison, graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The pair met on the job at the brokerage they worked for before starting West + Main Homes.

“We love creating third spaces,” Staub said — places that are neither home nor work, but somewhere in between.

That philosophy turned a real estate storefront into a cluster of businesses.
First came the realization that there wasn’t a coffee shop nearby where people could actually sit and work for a couple of hours. So Staub and Linder opened one in 2022: Blue Nest Coffee.

From there, the idea for a restaurant next door followed.

“We could have expanded the coffee shop,” said Linder, 39, “but we wanted to do the full restaurant.”

So, they moved a West Way Lending branch into a nearby standalone building to make room.

Blue Nest Bar and Bistro opened in July, with a slow rollout and a full bar — and a menu the two describe as a work in progress.

“There are wonderful restaurants around here — Cuban, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, an upscale pub,” Staub said. “What was missing was Mediterranean.”

It’s a bet on a neighborhood Staub and Linder say is only now catching up to its own potential.

“Applewood has evolved,” Staub said. “Residential values are there. Now the retail is catching up, and we’re happy to help it catch up. This is our home — our friends and our neighbors.”

Ask either woman what a typical day looks like, and neither has a simple answer.
Staub might be teaching a Pilates class in the morning, bussing tables at Blue Nest in the afternoon, and sitting across from a lawyer by early evening.

“We don’t always have a suit on,” she said, “and that’s why we love it.”

For Linder, the road to co-owning a restaurant group was not obvious, but it became clear over time.

“I was terrified of everything that comes with restaurants,” she said.

When the idea for the first coffee shop came up, her instinct was to scale it back — “let’s just open it for the agents,” she remembers thinking.

She’s since come around entirely. “It’s not easy,” she said, “but it’s one of the most rewarding things you can do. You get to provide jobs and create a third place for the community.”

None of it, the two quickly pointed out, was built with outside money. Instead, they relied on what they had already built.

“Real estate has been profitable for us,” Staub said. “It’s the queen bee that helps us do everything else.”

West + Main revenue funded the coffee shop, the restaurant, the Pilates studios and the lending offices — all without taking on investors.

“We’ve completely bootstrapped everything. That’s enabled us to do all of this.”
Rather than stick to real estate, the pair let their passions and hobbies lead them in new directions.“We love the challenge of tackling something new, building new brands and constantly learning through creating,” Linder said.

The coffee shop and the Pilates studios hit profitability in their second year of operations. They anticipate the restaurant will follow a similar trajectory.

“We weigh things carefully. If it’s something we want to do, we say yes and figure out how to make it work. No opportunity should pass because of fear. That’s what’s fueled all of this.”

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