alt Hacker NewsWasn’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.)
You’re totally right, my mistake. Founded in 2014, gained popularity in 2017 for pledging to hire 10,000 veterans because starbucks said they’d hire 10,000 refugees. According to wikipedia only ~150 of their ~500 employees are vets.
The thing is that both of these are cynical pledges. I’m not like yay starbucks on this - i’m sure they were doing it for the PR and because refugees are easily exploited workers. It’s one of the things I hate about reactionary backlashes - by creating “sides”, i find myself on a side with people i don’t want to be on a side with because the other side is dumber