A July 2021 New York Times headline presented a compliment inside a loaded question: “Can the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right?” Just the insinuation that a company co-founded by three veterans could compete with America’s landmark coffee company is provocative. The startup, unsurprisingly, courts the comparison: In 2017, the liberal, Seattle-based Starbucks offered to hire 10,000 refugees; in response, Black Rifle Coffee Company said it would hire 10,000 veterans.

The Salt Lake City-based company is a long way from Starbucks but also a pretty long way from where it started. Co-founder Evan Hafer started by grinding his own coffee via modified gun trucks while deployed in Iraq as a Green Beret. Now, the business, which started officially in 2014, employs approximately 550 people, half of whom are veterans, reservists, or military spouses. Hafer, who also spent nearly a decade as a CIA contractor, is the brains behind starting the company, which imports coffee beans from Colombia and Brazil and distributes them five days a week to customers worldwide, packaged with patriotic and military references such as “Freedom Roast,” “Gunship Roast,” and “AK-47 Espresso Blend.”