Espresso for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photographs courtesy of Fire Department Espresso

Jason Patton, vice president of Fire Department Espresso and star of the Fire Department Chronicles video series, discusses his company’s passion for appetizing, handcrafted espresso and supporting first responders.

How did Fire Department Espresso near about?

Luke Schneider, our CEO, was a shipboard firefighter within the navy, where he fell in care for with espresso. After his provider ended, he met his future wife, Kate, at a café, and they bonded over the drink. They began experimenting with roasting and started Fire Department Espresso in Rockford, Illinois, in 2016.

What kinds of espresso terminate you provide?

We have a host of sunshine, medium, and dark roasts and espressos as properly as a spirit-infused line that’s extremely popular. We also provide ready-to-drink and single-assist alternatives. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Espresso of the Month Club accumulate to are trying various single-foundation blends from Africa, India, or South America; by way of the membership, we give back a share of sales to the farmers in those areas. Advise us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fireplace provider, know what happens when one in all our maintain is injured, will get sick, or has a mental health challenge— a lot of occasions, there’s no person there to assist them pay bills as they recuperate. To enhance them, we started the Fire Department Espresso Charitable Foundation. Through it, we give a share of the proceeds from Fire Department Espresso to organizations that specifically accumulate and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fireplace departments, our Fire Department Shirt Club and Fire Department Espresso Club subscriptions allow us to enhance individual FDs by selling merchandise with their personalized branding. We roam to local fireplace departments, win one thing that represents them properly, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales immediately to them. For example, we have been able to send $14,000 to a fireplace department in Hawaii to assist those that misplaced their properties at some stage within the 2023 Maui fires.

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

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

What’s the inspiration late those videos?

How terminate you balance humor with reason? In 2015, I created Fire Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s lifestyles by way of humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar videos as a team and rapidly realized that emotional connections to brands are what really force them—there’s a distinction between any person being aware of your brand and supporting it relentlessly. Nonetheless we wanted to invent one thing extra to folk: daily humor. So we created the FDC videos, hoping to assist folk laugh for a cramped while.

They’ve been monstrously profitable. Firefighters, paramedics, and first responders immediately related to them, obviously, but so many others did as properly. And, as you said, they’re no longer accurate for laughs. There’s a small fragment of educational information late each one.

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

Many veterans have it complicated. They employ prolonged classes of time serving our country and usually reenter society with few opportunities to excel originate air of being firefighters or law enforcement officials. It was important, especially to Luke, to enhance those that stop so mighty for our country. That’s why we created our Shellback Espresso: as an homage to anyone who turns into a shellback within the navy.

Made within the United States is extraordinarily important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to no longer finest provide top-notch merchandise but also make exhaust of parents 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 tip of 2023 so folk may roam to us and aquire merchandise. Nonetheless going in Walmart in 2022 was a entire various beast. By June of 2023, we have been in 1,000 stores, and last year we have been in 10,000. We query to be in 15,000 stores by the tip of 2025.

What has the response been to your espresso and mission?

Overwhelmingly particular. The primary reason folk purchase our espresso is that it tastes fantastic. We may near out with the greatest videos and have the greatest giveback mission, but if the espresso doesn’t taste amazing, no person’s going to purchase it again. That’s why we’re so passionate about it.

And, as mentioned earlier, folk care for the videos merely because they brighten their days and teach them one thing. That’s such a chilly factor because education and comedy wishes to be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information better. So folk will seemingly be aware no longer finest what they learned but also that by supporting us, they’re helping to present back to those that assign their lives and health on the road each day.

For extra data, roam to firedeptcoffee.com