destroying their Keurig machines.
Hafer says Trump Jr. is a customer—“I’ve met him; he’s a very nice guy”—but that if people were not going to buy Black Rifle because of his praise, “I can’t control that.”
“We might disagree politically but … here, people can wear a shirt with a rainbow flag on it, an AR-15, a marijuana leaf,” he says. “They are not going to be kicked out of my company for them emphasizing their beliefs and freedom of speech.”
But when Starbucks announced last January that it would hire 10,000 refugees in the countries where it does business—in response to President Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries—Hafer acknowledges he saw red.
“Hipsterbucks brews burnt, bulls— coffee and they add a bunch of sugar, foam, cream, and sprinkle a side of other bulls— on the top to mask the taste of S—,” according to a Business Insider article, citing a Black Rifle blog post. “Mixed into each cup comes a convoluted ingredient of anti-American and anti-constitutionalism fluff that has seemed to further the entitlement of the millennial generation.”
(The blog post has since been taken down from Black Rifle Coffee’s website.)
Hafer told me he spoke to Starbucks representatives at an industry conference afterwards, and just wanted to convey that he feels it’s important that companies focus on hiring veterans first. (Starbucks, it should be noted, pledged in 2013 to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses by this year.)
“We buried the hatchet,” he says. “I’m not saying that things overseas don’t matter but we have a disproportionate amount of service members finding themselves alone, depressed, and disenfranchised.”
Hafer’s focus is squarely on veterans, who he says need to be put first. He says that includes former Afghan servicemembers who worked with American soldiers and are now living in the US. Hafer says he’s hired four of them to work at Black Rifle Coffee. The company has a total of 109 employees, half of whom are veterans.
In addition to providing veterans their daily jolt of java, Black Rifle Coffee is creating a supportive community that caters to veterans. “This hits really home for me,” he says.
