America's first black coffee brand sells millions of dollars a year! Potential is higher than Starbucks and Pi.

BLK & Bold is a coffee roaster and a national wholesaler of boutique coffee and bulk tea. In 2018, Rod Johnson and Pernell Cezar from the United States founded the BLK & Bold brand, which claims to be the first black-owned national coffee distribution brand in the United States. Not only that, change the brand in just three years, the annual income reached seven figures, and in Amazon, Target, Ben & Jerry's, NBA formed a cooperative relationship.

BLK & Bold's business started in the small garage of co-founder Cezar, when they had only a small bean dryer, but now BLK & Bold has grown into a well-known brand with 20000 square feet of commercial facilities. According to Cezar, there are very few black-owned coffee companies in the United States, and the shortage of black entrepreneurs in the coffee industry is mainly due to the lack of information and resources, including capital. And how does BLK & Bold do it, from small garages to thousands of stores?

BLK&Bold did not achieve this goal overnight. In the early days of the company, Cezar and Johnson relied mainly on social media marketing, selling bags of their own roasted beans to independent coffee shops and Midwest retailers, and spent about $22000 in personal savings on setting up a website and attending trade shows to showcase their products to retailers. The company's real breakthrough came in 2020, when BLK & Bold launched its products in 200Target (Target, a department store with stores in all 50 states and the District of Columbia) in January. It was a bold decision, but it was also in line with the company's vision of "making boutique coffee satisfy the community".

During the outbreak, BLK & Bold joined Amazon's black business acceleration program. The program aims to help black entrepreneurs build sustainability through strategic business guidance and promotional support. In May BLK & Bold became the first black-owned food and beverage brand to sign a license agreement with NBA. Cooperation with BLK & Bold will contribute to the expansion of NBA's youth programme. For each bag of NBA officially licensed coffee purchased, NBA will match BLK & Bold's 5 per cent contribution to the company's committed partners, who are currently struggling with various disadvantages (homelessness, war, lack of food).

The co-founder of BLK & Bold says the brand is built around a social mission, so the "5 per cent For Our Youth" project, which donates 5 per cent of total profits to non-profit organizations that support children in communities that lack national services, is its social responsibility. The cooperation with many brands not only exposed BLK & Bold in all directions, but also improved the awareness of the brand. Without innovation and development, BLK & Bold would not have grown so rapidly.

Not only coffee and tea-related products, the BLK & Bold brand is also constantly adding new products, such as ice cream and brand-related peripherals. On September 20th, BLK & Bold partnered with Ben & Jerry's to develop a newly released coffee ice cream called Change Is Brewing. The package on the ice cream carton, designed by artist Laci Jordan, shows a black woman with the word "liberation" written on it. BLK & Bold said she would make a new effort to cooperate with the black life movement through a small ice cream.

Nowadays, the competition in the international coffee market is very fierce. Under this trend, BLK & Bold competes with coffee giants such as Starbucks, Piye and DUNKIN, and successfully goes out of the circle. Its strength should not be underestimated.