Espresso for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photographs courtesy of Hearth Department Espresso

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

How did Hearth Department Espresso reach about?

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

What varieties of espresso enact you provide?

We have a host of light, 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-attend alternate choices. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Espresso of the Month Club fetch to take a gaze at diverse single-starting place blends from Africa, India, or South America; thru the club, we give back a portion of sales to the farmers in these areas. Command us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fireplace carrier, know what happens when one among our acquire is injured, gets ailing, or has a mental health self-discipline— a lot of instances, there’s no person there to attend them pay bills as they recuperate. To make stronger them, we started the Hearth Department Espresso Charitable Foundation. Thru it, we give a portion of the proceeds from Hearth Department Espresso to organizations that specifically accumulate and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fireplace departments, our Hearth Department Shirt Club and Hearth Department Espresso Club subscriptions allow us to make stronger individual FDs by selling merchandise with their custom-made branding. We roam to local fireplace departments, fetch one thing that represents them properly, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales at as soon as to them. For example, we were able to ship $14,000 to a fireplace department in Hawaii to attend these that misplaced their homes for the duration of the 2023 Maui fires.

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

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

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

How enact you balance humor with motive? In 2015, I created Hearth Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s existence thru humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar videos as a team and hasty realized that emotional connections to brands are what really power them—there’s a distinction between anyone being aware of your brand and supporting it relentlessly. But we wanted to absorb one thing more to folks: daily humor. So we created the FDC videos, hoping to attend folks laugh for a few minutes.

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

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

Many veterans have it sophisticated. They use lengthy durations of time serving our nation and usually reenter society with few alternatives to excel outside of being firefighters or police officers. It was important, especially to Luke, to make stronger these that stop so noteworthy 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 US is amazingly important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to now no longer most sensible doubtless present high-notch merchandise but also make use of folks in places love Rockford, South Carolina, and Texas.

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

We opened a small local storefront at the cease of 2023 so folks may seek advice from us and purchase merchandise. But entering into Walmart in 2022 was a complete diverse beast. By June of 2023, we were in 1,000 shops, and last year we were in 10,000. We interrogate to be in 15,000 shops by the cease of 2025.

What has the response been to your espresso and mission?

Overwhelmingly clear. The #1 reason folks purchase our espresso is that it tastes fantastic. We may reach out with the coolest videos and have essentially the most productive giveback mission, but when 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, folks savor the videos simply because they brighten their days and teach them one thing. That’s such a cool thing because education and comedy may aloof be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information better. So folks will bear in thoughts now no longer most sensible doubtless what they learned but also that by supporting us, they’re helping to give back to these that build their lives and health on the road every day.

For more information, seek advice from firedeptcoffee.com