Espresso for a Cause

Interview with Jason Patton
Photos courtesy of Hearth Department Espresso

Jason Patton, vp of Hearth Department Espresso and star of the Hearth Department Chronicles video series, discusses his company’s passion for enjoyable, handcrafted coffee and supporting first responders.

How did Hearth Department Espresso come about?

Luke Schneider, our CEO, was a shipboard firefighter in the navy, the place he fell in fancy with coffee. 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 Hearth Department Espresso in Rockford, Illinois, in 2016.

What varieties of coffee achieve you provide?

We have a host of gentle, medium, and dark roasts and espressos as successfully as a spirit-infused line that’s incredibly popular. We also provide ready-to-drink and single-encourage alternate ideas. Plus, each month, subscribers to our Espresso of the Month Membership catch to strive various single-origin blends from Africa, India, or South America; via the club, we give back a part of sales to the farmers in those areas. Inform us about how your company helps firefighters: Luke and I, being in fire provider, know what happens when one among our maintain is injured, gets ill, or has a mental health challenge— a lot of times, there’s no one there to assist them pay bills as they recuperate. To back them, we started the Hearth Department Espresso Charitable Foundation. Via it, we give a part of the proceeds from Hearth Department Espresso to organizations that specifically accumulate and distribute funds for such situations.

As far as fire departments, our Hearth Department Shirt Membership and Hearth Department Espresso Membership subscriptions allow us to back individual FDs by promoting products with their customized branding. We skedaddle to local fire departments, catch one thing that represents them successfully, create their shirts and coffees, and return a percentage of the sales on to them. For example, we had been able to send $14,000 to a fire department in Hawaii to assist those that misplaced their houses at some stage in the 2023 Maui fires.

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

In addition to making high-quality coffee products for an affordable stamp, we wanted to be a way of life brand that folks may emotionally connect with; that’s also why we’ve leaned so noteworthy into social media movies. We want folks to wear our gear and really feel dependable about it because of what it represents.

What’s the inspiration at the back of those movies?

How achieve you balance humor with cause? In 2015, I created Hearth Department Chronicles as a way to share a firefighter’s lifestyles via humor. After I began working here, we started doing similar movies as a team and rapid realized that emotional connections to brands are what really drive them—there’s a distinction between any person being aware of your brand and supporting it relentlessly. But we wanted to fabricate one thing extra to folks: daily humor. So we created the FDC movies, hoping to assist folks laugh for a jiffy.

They’ve been monstrously a hit. Firefighters, paramedics, and first responders immediately related to them, needless to say, but so many others did as successfully. And, as you said, they’re no longer lawful for laughs. There’s a small fraction of educational information at 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 complicated. They exhaust long classes of time serving our country and repeatedly reenter society with few alternatives to excel exterior of being firefighters or law enforcement officials. It was important, especially to Luke, to back those that quit so noteworthy 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 the US is amazingly important to us too. It means forgoing the cheaper way of manufacturing overseas to no longer totally present top-notch products but also exhaust folks in places treasure Rockford, South Carolina, and Texas.

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

We opened a small local storefront at the cessation of 2023 so folks may seek advice from us and aquire products. But coming into Walmart in 2022 was a total various beast. By June of 2023, we had been in 1,000 stores, and last year we had been in 10,000. We demand to be in 15,000 stores by the cessation of 2025.

What has the response been to your coffee and mission?

Overwhelmingly trudge. The number 1 reason folks purchase our coffee is that it tastes incredible. Shall we come out with the unbiased dependable movies and have the suitable giveback mission, but when the coffee doesn’t taste amazing, no one’s going to aquire it again. That’s why we’re so passionate about it.

And, as talked about earlier, folks fancy the movies merely because they brighten their days and teach them one thing. That’s such a cool thing because education and comedy have to be synonymous, especially since humor helps us retain information higher. So folks will bear in mind no longer totally what they learned but also that by supporting us, they’re serving to to present back to those that assign their lives and health on the line every day.

For extra info, seek advice from firedeptcoffee.com