Filgap isn’t a word most people recognize.
That’s okay. It’s probably part of why I kept it.
When I started thinking seriously about building a coffee roastery in Squamish, British Columbia, I kept coming back to something I had learned from my earlier business experience. For a small founder-led brand, the business and the person building it are hard to separate. Something of the founder’s values, habits and way of seeing things eventually finds its way into the brand.
So before I had a name, I spent some time looking back at my own life.
Filling the gaps
I grew up in Korea, where working hard and trying to improve often felt like a normal part of life.
Looking back, I could see my life as a series of stages. In school, there was always a next step. At work, there was something else to learn or become capable of. Marriage and family brought a different set of things I had to learn along the way.
For a long time, I simply thought of that as growth.
Later, I started seeing it another way. A lot of my life had been spent trying to fill the space between where I was and where I hoped to be.
And I wondered if that was really just my story.
Maybe many of us know some version of that distance. The gap itself might be completely different — work, family, relationships, learning, or simply the kind of life we want to live.
I still didn’t have a name. But the idea of filling something that was missing stayed with me.
A different question
Moving to Canada changed that idea a little.
I came here later in life, after spending most of my career in Korea. I was starting again in a different language, culture and professional environment. I knew my place here probably wouldn’t look the same as the life I had before.
That made me think less about being at the centre of things and more about where I might be useful.
Maybe filling a gap didn’t always have to mean filling something in myself so I could move to the next stage.
Maybe it could also mean noticing a space around me and finding something useful I could do there.
Then, around that time, I found myself looking at a brick wall.
What was between the bricks
The bricks were the obvious part.
What caught my attention was what sat between them.
The material filled the spaces between the individual pieces and made them part of a whole.
The word that stayed in my head was grout.
I wrote “Grout” on a note and kept looking at it.
For a while, I seriously considered it as a name.
But there was a problem.
Grout Coffee did not sound like something I wanted to drink.
The idea fit. The name didn’t.
So instead of thinking about the material itself, I started thinking about what it did.
It filled the gap.
From Fill Gap to Filgap
I even looked up the phrase “fill the gap” to make sure it carried the meaning I thought it did.
From there came Fill Gap.
That was closer, but it still felt too direct. It almost explained the idea before anyone had a chance to wonder about it.
Then I started playing with the spelling.
Fillgap.
Filgap.
I chose the second one.
Part of the reason was visual. Filgap simply looked a little cleaner to me.
But I also liked that removing one “l” hid the meaning by one small step.
Someone could see the name and ask:
What is Filgap?
What gap?
What are you trying to fill?
I liked leaving that question there.
A question that can stay
I also didn’t want the name to tie the company to one answer forever.
A very small business can only do small things. If it grows, what it is genuinely capable of doing may grow too.
So the name became a question for Filgap as much as an explanation of where it came from:
What gap can we genuinely help fill?
The word genuinely matters.
I don’t want Filgap to attach itself to a big idea just because it sounds good. I would rather notice something real, understand it as well as I can, and start with what I can actually do.
Right now, that starts with coffee.
I wanted freshly roasted specialty coffee in Squamish that matched the kind of coffee I enjoy, with a simple way to get it close to home.
Then came another question.
Maybe there are other people in Squamish who want coffee this way too.
That is the first gap Filgap Coffee is working on.
It’s a small place to begin.
For now, I think that’s enough.
Fill the gap.
