The article in the url below checks-in on a company I have been following reasonably closely – Black Rifle Coffee Company (BRCC; see Strategic CSR – BRCC). The article makes the case that, although they may not be your values, BRCC is clearly a values-based business:
"You might call Black Rifle Coffee Co. a socially conscious enterprise. 'This is a veterans' corporation,' founder and CEO Evan Hafer, a former Green Beret, says in a Zoom interview. More than half of Black Rifle's employees have served in the military or are family of veterans. In 2021 the company put $5.3 million in shares toward starting the BRCC Fund, a charity dedicated to helping wounded or traumatized veterans and their families. That was on top of $1.2 million in charitable contributions and $3 million worth of coffee and related products to active-duty military and first responders."
In spite of BRCC's commercial success (revenues of "$233.1 million" in 2021), the firm has faced difficulty identifying more legitimate partners with which it can work:
"But Mr. Hafer says Black Rifle struggled to find banks and law firms to help it arrange an initial public offering. Since he founded the company in 2014, companies have told him that it was 'too irreverent' and poses 'reputational risk.'"
The ostracizing (perceived or real) has continued in terms of financial institutions:
"In 2019 and 2020, a Black Rifle spokeswoman says, company leaders were talking to Chase, Bank of America and Macquarie Group about raising capital. After initially showing interest, all three companies declined to work with Black Rifle, citing the company's image. In 2018 Black Rifle had tried to open an account at a Chase branch in San Antonio and had been turned away over reputational concerns. The spokeswoman says that Macquarie was particularly fixated on the name of its in-house magazine, Coffee or Die, which covers military issues and won the Military Reporters & Editors Association's 2022 journalism contest for overseas coverage."
The story is the same with law firms:
"Black Rifle hit similar roadblocks in 2019 and 2020 with Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. All three law firms passed on working with the coffee company because of its image. According to the Black Rifle spokeswoman, Latham & Watkins said that its reputational risk committee thought no one from top law schools would be willing to work at the firm if it took on Black Rifle as a client, especially because its name included the word 'rifle.' The name 'is an homage to the service rifle,' Mr. Hafer says. Like the guns he taught special-operations soldiers to shoot, he says, coffee is 'lifesaving equipment.'"
BRCC's founder and CEO, Hafer, extrapolates this exclusion to suggest it is indicative of the reaction all veterans face in seeking to engage with these normal elements of society. What I find interesting is that these banks and law firms would not doubt have no hesitation engaging with oil firms. So, why is it that a genuinely values-based business that is seeking to represent a population that society says it reveres (veterans) is excluded, when oil firms (which, by any measure have produced many times more harm than BRCC) are not shunned in the same way? The article suggests BRCC is being ostracized due to political correctness, but that seems less compelling if oil and gas firms are fine. Or, is perceived social and political 'harm' treated in a different way to environmental harm (which is much more damaging from a longer term perspective)?
Take care
David
David Chandler
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A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company
By Megan Keller
September 16, 2022
The Wall Street Journal
Late Edition – Final
A15
