ADVERTORIAL
MEET EVAN HAFER,
FOUNDER/CEO OF BLACK
RIFLE COFFEE COMPANY
LIFELONG ANGLER CHANNELS SAME
ENERGY INTO CATCHING FISH AS
ROASTING COFFEE
Evan Hafer knew he’d been bitten hard by the bass bug. As
he lay in bed with his iPad – scouring fishing websites,
YouTube and Google for any crumbs of info he could find
that might help him coax a bass to bite in a small creek east of
San Antonio – the CEO and founder of Black Rifle Coffee Company
surrendered to the fact that he was “going down a rabbit hole.”
“My wife actually called me out on it,” Hafer chuckles. “This is
a tiny little creek, no more than 30 feet wide, and there’s hardly
any current at all. But I hooked one and had it strip line. I know
there are bigger bass in there. So I’m in bed watching bass fishing
tutorials on YouTube. I’m usually answering Slack messages
and emails and messages about selling coffee, but I put my
evening business on hold. My wife said, ‘I haven’t seen you this
excited for years.’ I told her, ‘You don’t understand. I HAVE to
catch one of these fish.’”
Anybody who’s followed Black Rifle Coffee Company’s aggressive
path through the coffee market – from Hafer’s 1-pound personal
coffee roaster in his garage to a coffee-purveying juggernaut
with $80 million in annual sales – likely understands that
there’s a lot of “HAVE to” in the former Green Beret.
“Fishing isn’t that much different than business: Every cast is
another opportunity,” Hafer says. “How could you not be excited
about that?”
FROM 10 POUNDS TO 1 MILLION
Hafer’s special operations background – and how those experiences
contributed to the business trajectory of Black Rifle
Coffee Company – are almost the stuff of social marketing legend.
The Idaho native became a devotee of high-quality brew in
the late 1990s and carried that bean-roasting obsession with him
through 15 years of deployments and operations throughout the
Middle East and Africa while serving in the U.S. Army Special
Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency. He sold his first bag
of “Dark Roasted Freedom” in 2014, as part of a 500-pound batch
that he roasted (pound at a time) in his garage.
Fast-forward through six years of nose-to-the-grindstone
labor, astute, hyper-creative marketing, viral videos, and explosive
growth, and you have BRCC, circa 2020.
In its current iteration, BRCC operates out of roasting facilities
in Utah, Tennessee and Texas; employs more than 230 people
(nearly half of whom are military veterans); and roasts more
than 1 million pounds of coffee a year. That coffee – from the
mega-bestselling 12-ounce bag of Just Black roast to recently
released BRCC Coffee Steep Bags – is sold in more than 1,700
retail locations and online.
The BRCC product line starts with high-quality ground and
whole-bean coffees – as well as single-cup rounds – ranging from
light to extra-dark roast, but also includes a canned espresso
drink (Ready To Drink Coffee), cocoa and coffee additives. It’s
delivered weekly to monthly through a customizable subscription
service to a pool of subscribers that grows by the month.
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FLWFISHING.COM | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING.COM | JUNE-JULY 2020