If you’ve scrolled on my Instagram, you can probably tell I like coffee. and tea. and matcha. Pretty much, everything with caffeine. I, like so many others, am addicted to coffee. Thankfully, I’ve been blessed and don’t love sweet things - so I drink my coffee black or with a splash of dairy-free milk… but still, coffee addiction means lots of caffeine, spending (too much) money at Starbucks, and for others - empty calories.

Would you feel better about spending your hard-earned on coffee, if your money went to a good cause - not someone’s pockets?

I was introduced to Mission Cold Brew by my boyfriend, who discovered Sarah and Mike through various networking events in his area. He became addicted to their coffee, and quickly got me attached, too! When I heard about their mission, I loved them even more as a company.

I had the opportunity to chat with Sarah about Mission Cold Brew, and I’m thrilled to share our conversation with One Bite Gluten-Free!

I'm Sarah and my husband Mike and I are the founders of Mission Cold Brew in Fall River, MA! My background is actually in the arts! I have a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s in special education. A number of years ago, when I had my first child, I took a year off from teaching to spend time with my little one and explore the possibilities of a career in photography. That was my first official small business start-up.  My photography career quickly took off and I left education.

Everything that we offer is cold brewed or hand whisked with whole ground spices. We focus on both cold brew coffee as well as cold brew tea which we blend in house and infuse with fruit for natural sweetness. We call our goods "craft coffee and tea" as we work in small batches and creatively blend and brew with lots of attention, creativity and thought.

Our menu includes nitro cold brew coffee and tea, cold brew lattes, hand whisked matches and chais and a number of other unique brews and blends. We also created the Cold Pressed Bar which has grown in popularity in the city!

Presently, we have a shop and test kitchen in Fall River that is open to the public, but our primary form of business is distribution! Since we keg all of our cold brews, we can distribute them out to different restaurants, small businesses, breweries, and even churches! Serving cold brew on tap allows businesses to serve high-quality coffee and tea with little to no waste as kegged products have a much longer life than traditionally hot brewed and serve coffee and tea. 

My husband and I had always dreamt of running a coffee and tea business. We would talk about what could be for years.

About 5 years ago, we began to dream about what it would look like to create a company that would connect people to causes that are bigger than themselves... causes we have always been incredibly passionate about. What would it look like to create a company where something people did every day could save and impact lives.

My husband has been a local pastor for the last 15 years! Our faith drives us and inspires us to be change in this world and create a place where others can do the same!

When you begin to dig into the causes we support, you can quickly start to feel overwhelmed and sometimes helpless.

I remember the first time I talked about human trafficking with my son. At the tender age of 7, he felt so completely overwhelmed at the thought that some kids on the other side of the world were sold as slaves and made to work in unfair conditions. I remember him being moved is much, even to tears, and he kept asking what we could do. The amazing thing is that we can help. There are incredible organizations that are making a real impact. Our dream is to creatively help fund these organizations and inspire other business owners to do the same. 

 Our hashtag is #everycupchangeslives. We dream of it becoming a movement!

When the opportunity presented itself to launch Mission Cold Brew, we decided we were going to put our mission at the forefront of the business, donating 10% of every purchase and 100% of our year ends profits. While there are many amazing businesses that pledge to turn their year-end surplus back to a cause, the fact is that startups sometimes take years to yield a large year-end surplus.

For us, serving great cold brew is a dream, but its really a means to the mission.

We knew that we had to put the mission at the forefront by donating the first 10% so that consumers had a tangible number they could hold to that was being dedicated to changing lives. As a family, we have worked to support many of these causes over the years. We settled on 4 areas that we knew every consumer could get behind, regardless of politics or opinions. Our mission is to impact 1- human trafficking 2- clean water 3- hunger and poverty 4- orphan and foster care.

We have big dreams for the future! Our immediate goals consist of building our keg program and expanding on tap into new locations. It has been so fun to build relationships with so many other small businesses and help provide great coffee and tea for their establishments.

We hope to penetrate college campuses within the year and are in the process of forming relationships in this arena. We know our target market is the college-age and professional and people who have an appreciation for quality craft coffee. We really believe in the upcoming generation and know that most college students in New England would be especially interested to drink coffee and tea that can do so much more in the arena of social causes!

In the future, we dream of bottling our coffee and tea in ready to drink single servings. We dream of partnering with larger markets who believe in our #everycupchangeslives movement and getting our bottled goods distributed out. We are also dreaming creatively about unique ways we will get our products into the hands of more restaurants, small businesses, and even nonprofits across the country. We have seen so much exciting growth in just 6 months. We can't wait to see where Mission Cold Brew will be in the coming 5 years!

Yes actually, all of our coffee, tea, and hand-whisked drinks are gluten-free!