In 2014, Green Beret Evan Hafer and fellow veteran Matt Best took their passion project and turned it into a business.
“On the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I’d modified our gun trucks to have a grinder—a coffee grinder—and I would make french press coffee in the mornings before we were getting ready to conduct any operations in 2003,” Hafer told FOX Business.
Black Rifle Coffee is now on track to do more than $80 million in business.
What started as just coffee has rapidly expanded too. Black Rifle now offers four different roasts in addition five pound bags of coffee, cocoa, decaf coffee, hats, shirts and hoodies. The company has 200 employees, and 80 of them are veterans including much of the executive team.
Hafer told Fox Business his goal is to have 20 coffee shops by 2020.