In 2018, Blackout Coffee Co. was not a national coffee business. It was a family operation running out of a garage in Southwest Florida.
John and Rachael Santos had started with a simple objective: create coffee they wanted to drink themselves and build a business around the roasting process. What followed was a steady expansion from a home-based operation into a larger roasting company serving customers across the United States.
The story began with John Santos long before coffee entered the picture.
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Portuguese immigrant parents, Santos moved with his family to Portugal when he was about three and a half. He spent much of his childhood there before returning to the United States on his own in 2000, shortly before his 19th birthday. He arrived with $1,000 in savings.
His working life would take him through several industries and business ventures. The mortgage collapse eventually forced another change in direction and helped lead Santos and his family to Florida.
There, a new business began to take shape.
The First Roasts
Blackout Coffee launched in September 2018. At the time, the operation was based in the Santos family’s garage.
The idea had developed partly from the couple’s experiences in Europe. After returning to Florida, they wanted coffee with a flavor profile they preferred and saw an opportunity to create it themselves.
The early operation was small, but the business soon moved beyond the family home.
In April 2019, Blackout Coffee opened its first dedicated roasting facility in Punta Gorda, Florida. The 1,800-square-foot space gave the company room to handle production outside the garage and establish a more formal roasting operation.
Growth continued over the next several years.
A 5,000-square-foot roasting facility in LaBelle followed in 2021. By January 2024, the company had moved again, this time to a 36,000-square-foot headquarters in Fort Pierce. Later that year, the facility expanded to 64,000 square feet.
The physical changes tell part of the story. Each move represented another stage in a business that had begun on a much smaller scale.
Keeping the Roast Close to Home
Coffee remains at the center of the operation.
Blackout Coffee roasts its products at its Florida facility and offers a range that includes traditional coffee, flavored varieties, espresso, decaffeinated options and pods.
The company’s approach places particular emphasis on the roasting process. Rather than treating roasting as one step in a larger supply chain, Blackout Coffee has made it a defining part of its operation.
Customers can also sign up for the company’s Coffee Club subscription service, receiving coffee on a recurring schedule.
The model reflects the way the business has grown since its early days: roast the coffee, package it and ship it directly to customers.
Finding a Community Around the Brand
As the company expanded, its audience became an important part of its identity.
Blackout Coffee describes its customers as a broad group that includes entrepreneurs, parents, first responders, workers, creators and military personnel. The common thread is less about a particular profession than the lifestyle the company associates with its customer base.
That community has accompanied the company through its expansion.
Blackout Coffee reports that it has shipped more than one million orders to more than 350,000 customers nationwide. It also reports being ranked No. 353 on the 2024 Inc. 5000 list, with reported three-year growth of 1,244 percent.
The numbers mark a considerable change from the business that began in the Santos family’s garage six years earlier.
Coffee for Those Serving Abroad
The company’s story also extends beyond its commercial operation.
Through Operation Blackout, Blackout Coffee sends coffee and care packages to deployed Americans. The initiative has become an established part of the company’s activities, connecting customer purchases with shipments intended for military personnel and other Americans serving overseas.
The company reports that more than 2,000 care packages and more than 12,000 bags of coffee have been shipped through the program.
Care packages are shipped to deployed units each Friday, according to the company.
For a business whose origins are rooted in family and personal experience, the program has provided another way to build a connection between the brand and the community around it.
From Garage to 64,000 Square Feet
The scale of Blackout Coffee today is difficult to separate from the modest circumstances of its beginning.
The company started with John and Rachael Santos working from their family garage. It moved into an 1,800-square-foot roasting facility, then a 5,000-square-foot operation, before establishing its current headquarters in Fort Pierce.
The progression is a physical record of the company’s development.
For Santos, the path to coffee was not a straight one. It ran through an international childhood, an early return to the United States, different industries and the financial disruption that preceded the family’s move to Florida. Coffee became the next chapter.
What began as a small family business has since developed into a company shipping coffee across the country, while retaining the family ownership and Florida-based roasting operation that have been part of its story from the beginning.
The garage where Blackout Coffee started is no longer its workplace. But it remains the starting point of the company’s story.