Fire Department Coffee Is Run By Firefighters And Donates 10% Of Proceeds To Injured First Responders
For a tea drinker, Sean Cullen is very loyal to one coffee brand: Fire Department Coffee. The New York City-area firefighter got to know the ...
Posted — Updated“The guys are great. They really legitimately care,” Cullen said of FDC’s leaders, Luke Schneider (pictured below at right) and Jason Patton, who originally supported a firefighter football team charity he was involved in.
Veteran Brews Up A Coffee Business
Firefighters and coffee are a natural match, FDC vice president Patton said, since firefighters have to keep fueled up on 24-hour shifts to be ready to go out on calls.
“Coffee is what drives pretty much every firefighter, paramedic and first responder in the world,” Patton said.
He explained that they didn’t just want to offer caffeinated drinks for sale.
“We wanted to make sure that we were actually giving back to the community’s first responders,” Patton said.
Take a look at his energetic promotion of Fire Department Coffee in this video from the Fire Dept. Coffee YouTube page.
Fire Dept. Coffee Grows Through Giving
Since FDC started in 2016, it has doubled its sales each year, said Patton. The staff started with just Schneider and his wife, then added a secretary and a roaster and grew from there. Today, Fire Department Coffee has 25 employees.
Every month the Fire Department Coffee Foundation sits down to pick two people in need to give between $500-$2,000.
“What we love to do is, when we hear stories about individuals who need help, we go to their benevolent funds and we donate directly to them,” Patton said. “We always want to make sure that the funds are going to the people who need it the most.”
Active military, veterans, first responders and emergency dispatchers also receive a 15% discount on all purchases.
“We’d like to see a very strong retail presence and ‘ready to drink’ cans of coffee,” Patton said. “We want to be the coffee brand that every hard-working man or woman chooses on a daily basis.”
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