I'm a veteran, a former Black Rifle Coffee customer, and the founder of a competing coffee company. That makes me either the least qualified person to write this review, or the most. I'll let you decide.
This isn't a hit piece. What they built was genuinely incredible. But what they became is a different story — and if you're a BRCC customer wondering why something feels off, you deserve an honest answer.
Full disclosure: I'm Mike, founder of Aerial Resupply Coffee. 20 years Army, logistics officer, three deployments, Bronze Star. I have an obvious interest in you switching brands. I'm telling you that upfront so you can weight everything I say accordingly. What I won't do is lie to you.
What Black Rifle Built Was Real
Give credit where it's due.
I didn't discover BRCC until around 2018, when someone made me a cup. I wasn't blown away by the coffee — but I understood immediately what they had built. A brand with an identity. A company that felt like it was made by veterans, for veterans, at a time when that wasn't a marketing category yet. It was raw and it was real and it worked.
They turned veteran identity into a business before most people understood you could do that. They built a community of customers who didn't just buy coffee — they bought into something. That's genuinely hard to do and I would never take it away from them.
What happened next isn't a story about bad people. It's a story about what happens when a company built on identity takes outside money and answers to shareholders instead of customers.
They Traded Their Identity for an NYSE Ticker
The IPO changed everything. Not immediately. But inevitably.
In 2022, Black Rifle Coffee went public. That's a remarkable achievement by any measure. But going public means your primary obligation shifts. It's no longer the veteran community that got you there. It's the shareholders who bought in after.
The math changes when you're a public company. You stop optimizing for the customer who loves you and start optimizing for the customer who's easiest to acquire at the lowest cost. Grocery stores. Retail chains. Mass distribution. BRCC has said publicly that DTC — the direct-to-consumer crowd, the subscribers, the people who built them — is no longer the priority.
Think about that for a second. The customers who found them early, subscribed, evangelized, and built the brand through word of mouth are now the afterthought. That's not a criticism. That's just what public companies do. But it's worth knowing.
"They traded what made them BRCC for an NYSE stock ticker. They took the money and became something they shouldn't have."
Mike, founder — Aerial Resupply Coffee. Still here. Still roasting.
The Coffee Followed the Business Model
When cost becomes the primary variable, quality is the first casualty.
A company focused on grocery shelf placement and mass retail isn't asking "how do we make the best cup?" They're asking "how inexpensive can we produce something that sells, that won't create problems, and that sits on a shelf for six months without complaints?"
Those are legitimate business questions. They're just not the questions a specialty roaster asks. The answers lead to different coffee.
I'm not going to tell you BRCC tastes bad. But I will tell you it tastes like a company that's optimizing for margin and distribution, not for the person holding the cup. If you've been drinking it for years, you may have already noticed the drift. A lot of former customers have.
Small batch. Fresh roasted. Made to be good, not made to sit on a shelf.
When the Agenda Became the Product
A brand can be built on veteran identity without a political agenda. BRCC chose differently.
Politics was always part of the BRCC brand. For a lot of their early customers, that was the point. And they had every right to build it that way.
But here's what happens when politics becomes the product: you cut your potential customer base in half before anyone takes a sip. You spend energy on culture war positioning that could go into the coffee. You attract customers who are buying the ideology, not the beans — and when the ideology shifts or softens post-IPO, those customers feel betrayed on two fronts.
The veteran community is not monolithic. It never was. There are veterans across every political spectrum, every background, every branch. A brand that treats "veteran" as a political identity rather than a shared experience leaves a lot of people out.
We built ARC differently. Unapologetically military. Specific about the culture, the humor, the experience of service. Zero interest in telling you how to vote. The coffee is the mission. Everything else is noise.
So Is Black Rifle Coffee Still Worth It?
Honest answer from someone with a reason to say no.
If you want widely available coffee with military branding, BRCC will be on a shelf near you shortly. It's convenient. It's recognizable. It's fine.
But if you became a BRCC customer because you wanted to support a veteran-owned business that was built by people who actually gave a damn — and you've been feeling like something changed — you're not imagining it. Something did change. They told you it did.
The DTC customer, the subscriber, the person who found them before they were in every grocery store in America — that person is no longer their priority.
They have a million of those customers right now. Some of them are looking for somewhere else to go.
I'm Building the Competition.
Not the sanitized, shareholder-approved, grocery-shelf version of veteran coffee. The actual competition — built from scratch, by one veteran, with a product that's better and a voice that's different.
I don't have 800 employees. I don't have 10 million subscribers. I don't have the corporate infrastructure or the institutional backing or any of those other trappings that come with going public.
What I have is a roaster, a mission, and skin in the game. I have a product I stand behind with my name — not a board's approval. I have a community of customers who found us before we were easy to find, and I haven't forgotten that those are the people who matter most.
That's not a consolation prize. That's the whole point.
BRCC built something real and then traded it for scale. I'm building something real and intending to keep it that way. If you're a former BRCC customer who's been looking for somewhere to land — this is it.
Firewatch. Lifeline. MOAB. Cavalry. On the roaster. Every batch.
Former BRCC customer? Drop a comment. We want to hear what made you look around.
