During a late night of puncture calls final year, Dallas firefighter and paramedic Paul Clarke motionless he was ill of celebration bad coffee to keep him warning during shifts. He wanted to emanate a improved decoction for himself and his associate initial responders. But before he could, Clarke—an officer in a U.S. Marine Corps Forces Reserve—was deployed to Iraq for 9 months.
But he didn’t desert a idea. In his giveaway time he grown a judgment for a coffee operation that would give behind to a group and women on a frontlines behind home. “We started pricing out a roasting apparatus and operative on a brand, a logo, and a art on a packages,” Clarke says. “When we got back, we pulled a trigger on everything.”
With a assistance of dual Air Force captains, a associate Marine captain, his best friend, and his dad, Clarke launched Fire Grounds Coffee Company during a commencement of this year. Helping Clarke behind a scenes is Kyle Lund, a associate proprietor of Dallas Fire-Rescue Station 38 in Oak Cliff. They fry single-origin Colombian Excelso during a space in Tyler Station, located in a aged Dixie Wax Paper Company bureau in Elmwood.
“It is a high-grade coffee,” Clarke says. “It has hints of almond and caramel, that we was unequivocally vehement about, given no matter how we fry that season accumulation it’s going to ambience great.”
The multifaceted season form lends itself to opposite levels of roasting. Clarke and Lund have come adult with four: Rescue Roast, Bubba Brew, Bury Up Black, and Back a Blue. Back a Blue is a doughnut-flavored middle fry that was combined to respect a Dallas Police Department, given a glow and military departments mostly work closely together. “It’s a stereotypical thought that cops eat doughnuts, so we figured we would precedence that,” Clarke says. “We behind a blue as firefighters and they behind us up, so a name only kind of fell into place.”
One of a company’s priorities is investing in a community. Fire Grounds donates a apportionment of a deduction to Next Rung, a nonprofit focused on providing PTSD and mental health support for initial responders. It recently donated 722 pounds of coffee to a Muscular Dystrophy Association to be distributed to Dallas firefighters as interjection for lifting some-more than $360,000 during April’s Fill a Boot drive. And a association also donates one bag of coffee to initial responders for any 5 bags sold.
“I figured if we were going to make good coffee branded for them, afterwards we competence as good emanate a resource within a association to also give them coffee for free,” Clarke says.
The drift cost $16 for 1 pound, $40 for 3 pounds, or $20 for a accumulation container that includes a 4-ounce representation of each. The association skeleton to supplement several some-more flavors in 2020 and to start offered K-Cups. It’s time for a city’s cops and firefighters to toss out all that bad joe.
Available during weekend pop-ups during Dot’s Hop House Cocktail Courtyard and Truck Yard.