Espresso for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photos courtesy of Fireplace Department Espresso

Jason Patton, vice chairman of Fireplace Department Espresso and star of the Fireplace Department Chronicles video series, discusses his company’s passion for scrumptious, handcrafted coffee and supporting first responders.

How did Fireplace Department Espresso reach about?

Luke Schneider, our CEO, was a shipboard firefighter in the navy, the place he fell in appreciate with coffee. After his carrier ended, he met his future spouse, Kate, at a café, and they bonded over the drink. They began experimenting with roasting and started Fireplace Department Espresso in Rockford, Illinois, in 2016.

What varieties of coffee attain you offer?

We have a host of mild, medium, and dark roasts and espressos as well as a spirit-infused line that’s extremely popular. We also offer ready-to-drink and single-attend strategies. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Espresso of the Month Club bag to take a examine at assorted single-origin blends from Africa, India, or South America; by means of the club, we give back a fragment of sales to the farmers in those areas. Inform us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fire carrier, know what happens when one in all our gain is injured, gets in sad health, or has a mental health situation— a lot of occasions, there’s no person there to encourage them pay payments as they enhance. To enhance them, we started the Fireplace Department Espresso Charitable Foundation. Via it, we give a fragment of the proceeds from Fireplace Department Espresso to organizations that specifically get and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fire departments, our Fireplace Department Shirt Club and Fireplace Department Espresso Club subscriptions allow us to enhance individual FDs by selling merchandise with their customized branding. We streak to local fire departments, bag something that represents them well, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales at once to them. For example, we had been able to send $14,000 to a fire department in Hawaii to encourage those that lost their homes at some level of the 2023 Maui fires.

You sell FDC gear, stickers, and other merchandise as well. What was the impetus for it?

In addition to making high-quality coffee merchandise for an affordable value, we wanted to be a way of life brand that of us may emotionally join with; that’s also why we’ve leaned so worthy into social media videos. We want of us to wear our gear and feel apt about it because of what it represents.

What’s the inspiration in the back of those videos?

How attain you balance humor with reason? In 2015, I created Fireplace Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s lifestyles by means of humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar videos as a team and hastily realized that emotional connections to brands are what really force them—there’s a distinction between any individual being aware of your brand and supporting it relentlessly. But we wanted to offer something extra to of us: daily humor. So we created the FDC videos, hoping to encourage of us laugh for a fast time.

They’ve been monstrously profitable. Firefighters, paramedics, and first responders immediately related to them, of course, but so many others did as well. And, as you said, they’re no longer impartial for laughs. There’s a small portion of educational information in the back of each one.

Fireplace Department Espresso is veteran owned and made in America. What does that mean to the company?

Many veterans have it sophisticated. They utilize lengthy sessions of time serving our country and usually reenter society with few opportunities to excel open air of being firefighters or law enforcement officials. It was important, especially to Luke, to enhance those that quit so worthy for our country. That’s why we created our Shellback Espresso: as an homage to anyone who turns into a shellback in the navy.

Made in america is amazingly important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to no longer ideally suited present top-notch merchandise but also utilize of us in places care for Rockford, South Carolina, and Texas.

How has the company’s foray into retail gone?

We opened a small local storefront at the head of 2023 so of us may streak to us and aquire merchandise. But coming into Walmart in 2022 was a entire assorted beast. By June of 2023, we had been in 1,000 stores, and last year we had been in 10,000. We interrogate to be in 15,000 stores by the head of 2025.

What has the response been to your coffee and mission?

Overwhelmingly obvious. The #1 reason of us purchase our coffee is that it tastes fantastic. We may reach out with the coolest videos and have the most efficient giveback mission, but when the coffee doesn’t taste amazing, no person’s going to aquire it again. That’s why we’re so passionate about it.

And, as talked about earlier, of us appreciate the videos merely because they brighten their days and teach them something. That’s such a frigid thing because education and comedy may calm be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information better. So of us shall be aware no longer ideally suited what they learned but also that by supporting us, they’re serving to to give back to those that build aside their lives and health on the line each day.

For extra data, streak to firedeptcoffee.com