Black Rifle Coffee Company is a food and drink brand founded in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2014. It is headquartered in West Valley City, Utah.
Black Rifle Coffee was named on a truck tailgate at a shooting range. As the company's PR director tells it, Evan Hafer looked down at the rifle and the coffee in his hand and put the two together. Branding agencies have billed a lot more for a lot less. The company is run from West Valley City and has traded on the New York Stock Exchange since 2022.
Hafer served as a Green Beret and later as an overseas contractor, with close to 40 deployments, he told Vice. Along the way he roasted beans in a one-pound roaster for himself and his buddies. When he left government work, he has said, his home had been destroyed in a flood and he had just become a father. The website went live in December 2014, and the first sale came in January 2015. Two years later he had 74 employees and, by his account, had never taken out a loan.
The company now roasts at its own plant in Manchester, Tennessee, and co-manufacturers make its ready-to-drink coffee and Black Rifle Energy, launched in late 2024. The 2025 annual report still traces the business back to a one-pound roaster in a garage.
In 2018 Black Rifle Coffee launched its own online magazine and named it Coffee or Die.
New from Black Rifle Coffee Company
Third quarter results set for November 2
Black Rifle Coffee Company in Salt Lake City said on October 13 that third quarter 2026 results come out November 2, after the market closes. The conference call is November 3 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and a replay stays up through November 17.
