Coffee for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photographs courtesy of Hearth Department Coffee

Jason Patton, vice chairman of Hearth Department Coffee and star of the Hearth Department Chronicles video sequence, discusses his company’s passion for beautiful, handcrafted coffee and supporting first responders.

How did Hearth Department Coffee arrive about?

Luke Schneider, our CEO, was a shipboard firefighter within the navy, where he fell in appreciate with coffee. After his service ended, he met his future wife, Kate, at a café, and they bonded over the drink. They began experimenting with roasting and started Hearth Department Coffee in Rockford, Illinois, in 2016.

What varieties of coffee attain you offer?

We have a host of light, medium, and dark roasts and espressos as neatly as a spirit-infused line that’s incredibly popular. We also offer ready-to-drink and single-relieve choices. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Coffee of the Month Membership glean to test out assorted single-starting place blends from Africa, India, or South America; thru the club, we give back a portion of sales to the farmers in those areas. Narrate us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fireplace service, know what happens when one in all our hang is injured, gets sick, or has a mental health challenge— a lot of occasions, there’s no person there to assist them pay payments as they increase. To beef up them, we started the Hearth Department Coffee Charitable Foundation. Via it, we give a portion of the proceeds from Hearth Department Coffee to organizations that specifically acquire and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fireplace departments, our Hearth Department Shirt Membership and Hearth Department Coffee Membership subscriptions allow us to beef up individual FDs by promoting products with their custom-made branding. We dart to local fireplace departments, gather something that represents them neatly, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales immediately to them. For example, we had been able to ship $14,000 to a fireplace department in Hawaii to assist those who misplaced their homes all thru the 2023 Maui fires.

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

In addition to making high-quality coffee products for an affordable ticket, we wanted to be a standard of living brand that of us could emotionally join with; that’s also why we’ve leaned so remarkable into social media videos. We want of us to wear our gear and feel suitable about it because of what it represents.

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

How attain you balance humor with motive? In 2015, I created Hearth Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s lifestyles thru humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar videos as a team and snappy realized that emotional connections to brands are what really pressure them—there’s a distinction between somebody being aware of your brand and supporting it relentlessly. But we wanted to invent something extra to of us: daily humor. So we created the FDC videos, hoping to assist of us laugh for a minute while.

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

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

Many veterans have it hard. They use long sessions of time serving our country and usually reenter society with few opportunities to excel outside of being firefighters or police officers. It was important, especially to Luke, to beef up those who give up so remarkable for our country. That’s why we created our Shellback Espresso: as an homage to anyone who becomes a shellback within the navy.

Made within the US is extraordinarily important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to no longer fully present top-notch products nonetheless also exhaust of us in places appreciate Rockford, South Carolina, and Texas.

How has the company’s foray into retail gone?

We opened a small local storefront at the slay of 2023 so of us could dart to us and aquire products. But coming into 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 seek information from to be in 15,000 stores by the slay 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 extraordinary. Shall we arrive out with the easiest videos and have the fully giveback mission, nonetheless if 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 frosty thing because education and comedy ought to be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information greater. So of us will take note no longer fully what they learned nonetheless also that by supporting us, they’re serving to to give back to those that attach their lives and health on the road every day.

For extra data, dart to firedeptcoffee.com