About us
Two best friends and a bold idea
Cocaine Coffee started with a phone call. Ryan Bumgarner had a name nobody would forget, and he wanted coffee good enough to back it up.
Here's Ryan on why he picked it.
Thirty years of friendship
Ryan and JD grew up together in St. Charles, Illinois, just outside Chicago. While in a lacrosse tournament together, JD flung a rock that split Ryan's head open. Ryan got stitches. They've been best friends ever since.
College took them separate ways, but they kept a close group of friends and never lost touch. After Ryan moved to Tampa, JD kept visiting and fell in love, literally - he met his fiancée there and joined Ryan as a permanent Floridian.
The phone call
JD was driving home from his fiancée's yoga classes when Ryan called, very excited. He and Yulia were on speakerphone, out of breath, both trying to explain the idea Ryan had been talking through with the old group of friends: Cocaine Coffee.
It was a very Ryan idea. Starting as a wealth management banker right out of college and then moving into sales, he sold the technology banks use to stop illegal activity. So the sheriff's son who spent his career keeping dirty money out of banks now sells Cocaine Coffee. It isn't his first outrageous business idea, either.
After Ryan explained the concept - using a name as outrageous as Cocaine Coffee to support a mission that replaces cocaine with coffee - JD was all in. Knowing Ryan's charm and desire to make a difference in the world, he saw stars and helped Ryan found Cocaine Coffee weeks later.
Meet Yulia
Ryan's wife, Yulia, designs the art on our bags, and she's our primary coffee taster. If you like the way a bag looks, that's her work.
Yes, it's real coffee
It's the question Ryan hears most, and the answer is in the bag. Every coffee we sell is specialty grade, and each product page explains where it comes from, how it's roasted and what it tastes like.
Coffee instead of coca
The name points at Colombia's most infamous export. We'd rather point you to its best one. The O.G. comes from Caicedo, Antioquia, the first officially nonviolent municipality in Colombia, where growers once linked arms on a bridge to protect their coffee harvest.
Every month we also set aside the greater of 1% of net profit or $100 for charitable giving, split evenly between Colombian coffee-growing communities and addiction recovery in Tampa Bay. See where we give.
- Drink With Purpose -
Taste the Mission
Start with The O.G. or The Morning Fix, or browse the whole lineup.
