Pernell Cezar Jr. and Rod Johnson co-founded Des Moines, Iowa-based BLK & Bold Specialty Beverages in 2018. The two best friends grew up across the street from each other on the east side of Gary, Indiana, a former steel hub. “BLK & Bold came about through many years of conversations with Rod and myself over cups of coffee, really just kind of had our own ‘aha’ moment. We drink these beverages every day, but we don’t really see these beverages supporting domestic youth in need,” Cezar, the CEO, reflected to Amazon News. “So I bought a tabletop coffee roaster, and Rod began to become a self-trained coder to start building out first website. We began to build it brick by brick, roast by roast.”
BLK & Bold offers light, medium, and dark roasts, available as ground coffee or Keurig K-Cup Pods, as well as cold brew in cans. The company also sells a variety of green, black, and herbal teas. The co-founders, who started with $20,000 in savings, have scaled the company to become the first Black-owned, nationally distributed coffee brand, boasting a 33,000-square-foot production facility, a team of 25 employees, and products on the shelves of over 12,000 stores. In 2023 and 2024, it also appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private businesses, and it is the official coffee supplier for Microsoft’s global headquarters in Washington and the NBA’s headquarters in New Jersey and New York. It sells to retail stores such as Amazon, Safeway, Target, Walgreens, and Whole Foods, as well as to wholesale customers.
BLK & Bold also has a significant economic impact on the communities in which it operates, supported by local banking partners who share its vision. “In Des Moines, every dollar we deposit and every cup we sell strengthens not only our business, but also the economic vitality of the city that grounds us,” the company explained.
Video Courtesy BLK & Bold Specialty Beverages
The specialty coffee roastery conducts research and development batches of just one to five pounds, with quality control throughout the process. While the company ensures that all its coffee has exceptional flavor, it also emphasizes ethical sourcing, with beans coming from partners with “transparent supply chains, fair pay structures, and commitments to community reinvestment.”
Additionally, BLK & Bold is on the list of the top 30 Fair Trade coffee roasters in the country, meaning it pays farmers higher prices to help them address climate change, market volatility, limited capital, and poor infrastructure. It also pays a premium that goes toward the Fair Trade Community Development Fund, helping workers invest in the projects their communities need, such as schools, clinics, and climate-smart agriculture. Since becoming certified, the business has contributed more than $150,000 to the fund, supporting initiatives such as agroforestry and a new dentist’s office in Peru. These contributions expand the business’s global impact. The Rise & GRND medium roast and the Smoove Operator dark roast are both 100% Fair Trade-certified and account for more than 40% of retail sales.
Photo Courtesy BLK & Bold
Last year, BLK & Bold also teamed up with SGS, which is helping the coffee business improve its environmental performance. The team recognized that “Coffee itself is on the frontlines of climate change,” as shifts in temperatures and precipitation threaten growing regions and the farming communities that rely on them. Now, it is collecting data from its supply chain of farmers, packagers, and haulers to precisely document its carbon footprint, thereby enabling the business to “identify how our operations impact the environment, so we can measure our performance and improve over time,” Cezar described.
BLK & Bold is simultaneously building a climate roadmap, focusing on sourcing coffee beans from climate-smart operations; exploring compostable and recyclable packaging; considering rail and low-emissions or electric trucking; implementing energy-efficient facility upgrades; and evaluating clean energy options. “Our commitment is firm: to raise our environmental performance year over year and, ultimately, to achieve the highest B Corp score of any coffee company in the world, backed by numbers we can stand behind,” the company wrote.
Photo Courtesy BLK & Bold
While all of that is fantastic, it does not get to the root of the company’s ethos. BLK & Bold is dedicated to social impact, as evidenced by its B Corp certification. “Embedded at the core of what we do is this commitment to communities,” Johnson, the Chief Values Officer, said. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my support system.” BLK & Bold pledges 5% of gross profits to nonprofit organizations across the U.S. that support young Americans in becoming their best selves. Plus, the BLK & Bold Foundation supports its pledge partners and invites other financial backers to join them. To date, BLK & Bold has sent $465,000 to nonprofits and impacted the lives of 25,000 young people, with a foundation goal to support 72 million kids over the next two decades. “Coffee for you. Impact for our youth,” the company wrote.
This 5% For Our Youth initiative focuses its efforts on low-income youth living in under-resourced neighborhoods or attending Title I schools in more than ten cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. “We started BLK & Bold as two guys who know firsthand what it’s like to grow up in under-resourced communities. For us, the model is simple: never forget where you came from, and always reinvest in the people who were there for you,” Johnson explained.
First, BLK & Bold intervenes in and addresses several systemic barriers. As communities of color face food insecurity at about double the rate as White counterparts, the company works with organizations like City Growers in Brooklyn, Urban Growers Collective in Chicago, and Cloud 9 Farms in Philadelphia to bring farms and gardens to vacant land, promote food justice, and provide young people with agricultural skills and knowledge.
Photo Courtesy BLK & Bold
The business also partners with creative and cultural organizations. With low-income communities less likely to have funding for arts programs that would improve students’ academic performance and likelihood of graduating, Juxtaposition Arts in Minneapolis provides apprenticeship opportunities in careers such as ceramics, design, and textiles. With young people from marginalized communities disproportionately finding themselves without housing, and Black youth accounting for 46% of young people in the juvenile justice system, Sunset Youth Services in San Francisco provides crisis intervention and family support services to contribute to healing and stability.
BLK & Bold also works to close digital and graduation divides through technology and innovation collaborations. With about one-quarter of low-income households without access to a computer, one community partner, Houston-based Comp-U-Dopt, distributes computers and provides digital literacy training. Meanwhile, the nationwide graduation gap between high-income and low-income districts ranges from 4% to 12%. The Miami-based Center for Black Innovation offers a Young Coders Academy to prepare young people for tech-focused careers and connects them with potential mentors through events like BlackTech Week.
Finally, education and guidance partners, including Chicago’s Youth Guidance, D.C.’s Kid Power, and Des Moines’ By Degrees Foundation, comprise an important fourth sector that offers academic support, mentorship, and even wellness resources. The By Degrees Foundation, in particular, partners with public schools in BLK & Bold’s city to offer lessons in planning and saving to prepare more than 2,000 K-12 students per year for college and adulthood.
“When someone’s picking up BLK & Bold, they are supporting community, they are providing access,” Johnson said. “It’s great for people to realize every bag is impacting a kid,” Cezar added. He concluded, “If children are the future, then they should be equipped with the resources to manifest their potential, not left behind by socio-economic disparities.”
Photo Courtesy BLK & Bold
