After I polish off my annual steak tomorrow (and baked potato)
our desert will be a triple berry pie that is said to bring tears to your eyes.
Naturally, the pie will be topped with some vanilla bean ice cream, and will be
washed down with a cup of coffee – but a very special cup of coffee.
Brian learned about a coffee recently that is said to be extraordinarily
delicious. The company that makes is the Black Rifle Coffee Company, and it’s
got an interesting history.
Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC) is a coffee company based
in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States,
owned by former members of the armed forces of the United States. It gained
national attention in 2017, when it employed about 50 people, after pledging to
hire 10,000 veterans in response to Starbucks's pledge to hire
10,000 refugees.
The company was founded in December
2014 by former Green
Beret Evan Hafer. He began by selling a small volume of his
"Freedom Roast" coffee through a friend's apparel website. The coffee
sold well, so Hafer launched his own brand and website through which to sell
his coffee and branded accessories. The company specializes in its
online, direct-to-consumer coffee subscription service,
which had over 100,000 subscribers as of 2020. In addition to online sales,
Black Rifle Coffee Company has physical coffee shops in Utah, Texas,
and Georgia. The
coffee is also distributed at some firing ranges, 5.11 Tactical stores, and Bass Pro Shops.
BRCC has produced a number of sometimes controversial social media videos which combine military humor with hipster jokes and guns.
In 2017, BRCC expanded into Canada with a division based in Alberta and led by CEO Darren Weeks.
In 2018, BRCC opened a new coffee roasting facility in Manchester, Tennessee,
as part of a $6 million investment in the state. It also launched Coffee
or Die Magazine, an online news and lifestyle publication that reports on
military, veteran, law enforcement, and coffee topics.
In 2018, the company's gross revenue
totaled $30 million. In 2019, BRCC employed more than 200 people — 40
percent of them veterans of the U.S. military. At the time of reporting, their
products were available at 1,700 retail locations across the country. On
September 29, 2019, BRCC opened its first stand-alone licensed coffee shop
in Boerne, Texas. According
to the Washington Examiner circa
2021 they employed approximately 550 people, half of whom were veterans,
military spouses or reservists.
The company expanded in 2020 with the
release of ready-to-drink canned iced coffee. In March 2020, BRCC launched
a coffee-donation campaign to support medical and emergency workers,
quarantined military personnel and their families, and others working to
mitigate the national and global impact of COVID-19. In May, a Canadian gun ban
enacted following the 2020 Nova Scotia
attacks was mistakenly thought to include a ban on the coffee
company, but further inspection revealed that the ban was actually applied to a
similarly named Arizona-based "Black Rifle Company". In July, BRCC provided a $15,000 grant to the Hunter Seven
Foundation, supporting a new round of medical research exploring the effects of
toxic exposure in Afghanistan. A July 2021, article in The New York Times,
Hafer describes his vision for growth of the physical franchised stores using retired military
NCO's. He sees Navy petty officers and
Army staff sergeants joining
the company and running a franchise of their own rather than joining the local
police force in their hometowns.
In
November 2021, Black Rifle Coffee Company merged with SilverBox Engaged Merger
Corporation via a special purpose acquisition company in an effort
to raise funds for expansion and to go public. The company has
a valuation of approximately $1.7 billion. The
merger completed in February 2022.
Black Rifle Coffee Company's
corporate image is built on its conservative politics and supporting veterans.
Over half of its staff are former military.
The company maintains a
pro-military, pro-gun, pro-police image and has publicly
supported the politics of
former US President Donald Trump through
actions such as publishing a (since-deleted) blog post that supported Trump's
then-current proposal of an immigration ban from Muslim majority countries. The
company's political stance has attracted attention from Fox News,]and it has been endorsed by
conservative broadcast personality Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. A
2021 Salon article reported that BRCC is trying to draw a line
and distance themselves from the far-right after their logos and gear appeared
on Kyle Rittenhouse, a teen who was acquitted after killing two people and
injuring another during a Black Lives Matter protest
in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Black Rifle Coffee's symbols were also present
on rioters who trespassed the United
States Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
The company's brand is tied closely
to its pro-gun and socially
conservative image as well as close links with American military and law
enforcement.
In 2017 BRCC launched an advertising
campaign based on their plan to hire 10,000 veterans. While it was conceived
previously. BRCC launched the campaign after well-known coffee
purveyor Starbucks Corporation launched
an advertising campaign centered around their plan to hire 10,000 refugees. BRCC released a meme on social
media that juxtaposed an image of ISIS fighters photoshopped with Starbucks cups next to
an image of American soldiers in combat, which read: “Starbucks vows to hire
10,000 refugees,” and “Black Rifle Coffee Company vows to hire 10,000
veterans.” Company posts associated with the ad campaign labelled
Starbucks “Hipsterbucks.” While Hafer criticized what he saw as a
publicity stunt by Starbucks, BRCC also received similar criticism around their
ad campaign, especially because of the size disparity between BRCC and
Starbucks as well as the suggestion in BRCC's ad campaign that Starbucks
doesn't hire veterans. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and former Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates had
in 2013 launched a similar program to hire 10,000 veterans in the next five
years and that by 2017 they had hired 8,000 of them. As of February 2017 BRCC
employed 52 people in total. Hafer responded that BRCC and Starbucks are very
different companies, and that their size disparity meant that BRCC's proposal
was a much more ambitious plan. In a 2017 interview with Vice News, founder Hafer commended Starbucks'
veteran hiring program and clarified that he supports all hiring pushes as long
as the message is a positive one.
For a campaign in July 2019, BRCC
donated a bag of coffee to a police officer for every bag purchased, in
response to a story that six Tempe, Arizona police officers had been
asked to leave a branch of Starbucks.
BRCC rejected a potential logo for
one of their coffee bags featuring a Renaissance-style rendering of Saint Michael the
Archangel, a patron saint of military personnel, shooting a short-barreled rifle.
The design was rejected when Hafer was informed by a friend at The Pentagon that the image of Saint
Michael standing on the neck of Satan was
being used by white supremacists because
of the resemblance to George Floyd's
murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rifle_Coffee_Company
If you are wondering why there are more guns than people in America,
here’s the reason:
- In
the US, there are approximately 50,271 more gun stores than McDonald's.
Specifically, there are 14,146 McDonald's (as of December
2016) and 64,417 firearm dealers nationwide (as
of September 2017).
- There
are approximately 32,927 more gun stores than coffee shops (31,490 as of December 2015).
- There
are approximately 39,017 more gun stores than grocery stores (25,400 as of December 2016).
- There
are approximately 54,017 more gun stores than 7-11s (10,400 as of 2017).
- There
are approximately 3,578 more gun stores than pharmacies (60,839 as of 2014).
https://www.businessinsider.com/gun-dealers-stores-mcdonalds-las-vegas-shooting-2017-1
When Brian went online today to find out where to buy the coffee, the closest location was a gun store show near his home. His visit today was the 2nd time in his life that he has been in a gun story, which is exactly 2 times more than I have been in a gun story.
He described the gun store as “old school”. It was not well
lit, there were guns covering most of the wall surface of the store, and there
was a tip jar on the counter for the NRA.
After doing a little research, I discovered that I could buy
Black Rifle Coffee at a Speedway story that’s only a couple of miles from our
house.
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