Customer Showcase: Barracks Baristas Coffee Company

Meet Barracks Baristas Coffee Company! Founded by Darrin and Jeremiah in mid-2022, Barracks Baristas Coffee Company is a small veteran and minority owned business in Pennsylvania. We could say more, but they’ve said it better. Keep reading to learn more about how they got their start in coffee, what their mission behind coffee is, and how they use their own personalized rubber stamps to portray this.

How did you get into the coffee industry?

We really owe it to a good friend of ours that we worked with on Active Duty in the Pennsylvania National Guard. He suggested that someone should start a coffee business on the base we work on, and my partner and I wasted no time building the LLC and conducting research on how to get a coffee business started. We also have a passion for serving our community and for creating, and I view raw coffee beans no different than a painter views a blank canvas.

What's your business called and how did you start it?

We are Barracks Baristas Coffee Company, a small veteran and minority owned business in Pennsylvania. Our name pays homage to the building structures we lived in during military service (barracks). We started as more of a joke to pass the time at our job one day, as well as daydream about the "what ifs". However, after about two weeks of daydreaming about the "what ifs", I thought to myself, "why not actually try and make this work?". We bought our first roaster for next to nothing, bought some beans, and filled one of the co-owner's home with smoke after burning our first batch. Months and months later, after spending every extra dollar we had on new equipment and more beans, as well as every second of extra time we had learning how to make coffee, we were finally making good coffee and decided it was time to start selling our product.

What's your favorite coffee bean and favorite roast level?

Our medium dark Colombian is our most popular roast per our customers. However, I don't think you can ever go wrong with a light roast. It's my favorite to make. We have a Costa Rican light roast that we do, and the roast really brings out the fruit flavors of the coffee. It's not too heavy and has even been compared to drinking a hot tea as far as how smooth it is.

What do you use the rubber stamps for in your business? Are they for cost or visual/branding reasons?

First, the rubber stamp has been a life saver for our company. We use our stamps for all of our products. It's way more cost effective than labels or custom bags, yes, but it also gives our product a vintage and personal touch feeling that we wanted to have our customers understand and recognize.

How did you get the idea to use rubber stamps for your business?

My brother is actually the one who suggested using stamps. A few small companies that he buys products from use them, and when I saw what it looked like, and how personal it felt, I knew that was the direction I wanted our business to go as well.

How has using stamps helped?

The stamps have helped by keeping the cost of materials for labeling our products down significantly, as well as providing a personal touch to our products. I love the fact that every bag we stamp is not identical. There are variations of how the ink is distributed, position of the logo, and all three of us as owners use the stamps. There is no automation in the packaging of our products. Someone is involved in every step of our process. I feel like our customers can know by looking at our bags that it is personal for us, and we want them to know the care we put into what we are providing them. The stamps have really created a brand (no pun intended) for us. Someone can see our coffee bags from afar and know it's a Barracks Baristas coffee bag because of our stamps.