alt Hacker NewsBlack Riffle Coffee was founded because Starbucks pledged to hire 10,000 refugees, not because they boycotted the military.
The moral of the story as I see it is: not acting because you don't want a backlash is a loosing game - they'll find a reason to backlash anyway.
Wasn’t even that — Black Rifle was founded in 2014 and the Starbucks announcement was in 2017. Note that as of 2025, they only have 500 total employees. Which I think only proves your moral harder.
(I don’t have this at my fingertips, I just happen to be driving through Montana and my wife asked me about the Black Rifle Coffee billboards so I literally just read the Wikipedia article a couple of hours ago.)