Chicago. (Hafer declined to specify the amount.)
In the meantime, Black Rifle Coffee is moving in March to Texas, to a new headquarters in the Austin-San Antonio area. Hafer says the Interstate 35 corridor in that region is home to one of the largest veteran populations per capita in the country. It’s a more promising market than Utah, where the Mormon faith prohibits drinking coffee (and tea), thereby limiting the local customer base, he adds.
But coming to Austin, Black Rifle would join a growing number of consumer products companies. The Texas capital is also home to brands such as Tito’s Vodka, bought by Kentucky-based Heaven Hill brands in 2015,and Epic Provisions, which was purchased last year by General Mills for a reported $100 million. SKU, an Austin-based industry accelerator, is putting together its sixth startup class while also working with San Antonio-based grocery HEB and Land O’ Lakes in Minneapolis to help connect those companies to innovative startups working on new retail technologies.
Unlike those other companies, though, Black Rifle Coffee endorses an unabashedly right-wing ethos, with slogans like “Fresh-Roasted Freedom” and brands such as “Sniper’s Hide Blend” and “AK-47 Espresso.”
“I never want to confuse the company that we are something other than who we are,” Hafer says. “I have a gun safe in my office; I don’t hide these things.”
That’s a different tack from the one espoused by global coffee chain Starbucks, which in 2013 asked customers not to bring handguns into stores. That generated ire from gun-rights supporters who vowed to boycott the chain. Some in the Seattle area sported car window stickers of the familiar Starbucks mascot brandishing guns under the slogan “Guns and Coffee.”
Hafer says Black Rifle Coffee is aimed at veterans, who, he says, “have earned the right to be a little bit irreverent.”
In November, the company received some high-profile endorsements from conservatives like media personality Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr., who touted Black Rifle Coffee as an alternative to Keurig. The Vermont-based company had announced that it was pulling its ads from Hannity’s Fox News program, prompting a backlash from the network’s supporters, who shared videos of themselves
