Coffee for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photos courtesy of Fireplace Department Coffee

Jason Patton, vp of Fireplace Department Coffee and star of the Fireplace Department Chronicles video assortment, discusses his company’s passion for scrumptious, handcrafted coffee and supporting first responders.

How did Fireplace Department Coffee near about?

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

What forms of coffee accomplish you provide?

We have a host of light, medium, and dark roasts and espressos as nicely as a spirit-infused line that’s incredibly popular. We also provide ready-to-drink and single-attend ideas. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Coffee of the Month Club gather to take a peek at various single-starting place blends from Africa, India, or South America; by way of the membership, we give back a allotment of sales to the farmers in those areas. Reveal us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fire provider, know what happens when one in all our appreciate is injured, gets ailing, or has a mental health situation— a lot of instances, there’s nobody there to assist them pay bills as they get better. To aid them, we started the Fireplace Department Coffee Charitable Foundation. Thru it, we give a allotment of the proceeds from Fireplace Department Coffee to organizations that specifically acquire and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fire departments, our Fireplace Department Shirt Club and Fireplace Department Coffee Club subscriptions allow us to aid individual FDs by selling merchandise with their personalized branding. We sail to local fire departments, gain something that represents them nicely, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales immediately to them. For example, we had been able to send $14,000 to a fire department in Hawaii to assist those that misplaced their homes all the way by way of the 2023 Maui fires.

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

In addition to making excessive-quality coffee merchandise for an affordable trace, we wanted to be a daily life brand that folks may perhaps emotionally connect with; that’s also why we’ve leaned so grand into social media videos. We want folks to wear our gear and feel fair about it because of what it represents.

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

How accomplish you balance humor with motive? In 2015, I created Fireplace Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s life by way of humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar videos as a team and quick 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 provide something more to folks: daily humor. So we created the FDC videos, hoping to assist folks laugh for a few minutes.

They’ve been monstrously a hit. Firefighters, paramedics, and first responders immediately related to them, for certain, however so many others did as nicely. And, as you said, they’re now not lawful for laughs. There’s a small part of educational information in the back of each one.

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

Many veterans have it difficult. They employ long intervals of time serving our nation and normally reenter society with few opportunities to excel outdoors of being firefighters or cops. It was important, especially to Luke, to aid those that quit so grand for our nation. That’s why we created our Shellback Espresso: as an homage to anyone who becomes a shellback in the navy.

Made in the USA is amazingly important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to now not most attention-grabbing present high-notch merchandise however also exhaust folks in places savor Rockford, South Carolina, and Texas.

How has the company’s foray into retail long gone?

We opened a small local storefront at the stop of 2023 so folks may perhaps search advice from us and buy merchandise. But going in Walmart in 2022 was a entire various beast. By June of 2023, we had been in 1,000 shops, and last year we had been in 10,000. We search information from to be in 15,000 shops by the stop of 2025.

What has the response been to your coffee and mission?

Overwhelmingly obvious. The #1 reason folks purchase our coffee is that it tastes unbelievable. Lets near out with essentially the most attention-grabbing videos and have the handiest giveback mission, however if the coffee doesn’t taste amazing, nobody’s going to buy it again. That’s why we’re so passionate about it.

And, as mentioned earlier, folks savor the videos merely because they brighten their days and teach them something. That’s such a frigid factor because education and comedy wants to be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information higher. So folks will bear in mind now not most attention-grabbing what they learned however also that by supporting us, they’re helping to provide back to those that establish their lives and health on the line each day.

For more info, search advice from firedeptcoffee.com