Black Rifle Coffee Just Got Sued for Not Actually Being American

Black Rifle Coffee Company waves the American flag on every single bag it sells, charges customers a premium for buying “American,” and sources every bean it sells from outside the United States — then buries that fact in tiny type on the side of the packaging where they know most people will never read it.

The Non-Financial Ledger

They Sold You a Story. The Story Was Fake.

Black Rifle Coffee Company did not build its brand on taste, or quality, or fair trade sourcing. It built its brand on identity. The whole play was to become the coffee for people who buy American on principle — veterans, working-class conservatives, people who check labels and care. BRCC sold itself as the antidote to what they called “woke” corporations. The flag was the product. The patriotism was the pitch.

And that is exactly what makes this particular betrayal so sharp. The people BRCC targeted the hardest — the ones who will pay more to keep money in American hands, who will pass over a cheaper brand because the label says domestic — those are the exact people BRCC chose to deceive. This was a company that understood its customers’ values well enough to weaponize them. The flag on the bag was not branding. It was bait.

Plaintiff Justin Bakker of Turlock, California was a regular purchaser. The complaint is specific: he bought BRCC’s “Wakin the Neighbors” and “Spirit of ’76” bags from Save Mart and Safeway until around February 2025. He saw “America’s Coffee” and the flag on the front. He took it to mean what any reasonable person would take it to mean. He was wrong — and BRCC knew he was wrong, and kept charging him anyway.

Plaintiff Noah Lundgren of Kingston, New York bought BRCC’s “Tactisquatch” bag from Walmart on June 28, 2025. He did the same math every label-reading consumer does: flag plus “America’s Coffee” equals American product. The lawsuit confirms both plaintiffs would have paid less or bought elsewhere had they known the truth. That gap — between what they paid and what the product was actually worth given the false advertising — is the injury. Multiply that gap across tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of customers, and you have a company that built its entire revenue model on a lie it hid in tiny text on the side of a bag.

The Disclosure They Hoped You’d Never Find

Here is the detail that moves this from aggressive marketing into deliberate deception: BRCC put the truth on the label. They did. In small, inconspicuous lettering on the side of the bag, BRCC reveals that they only roast their coffee in the United States. Roasting. Not growing. Not harvesting. Not processing. Just the last step, heating beans they bought from foreign farms in industrial machines for seven to twenty minutes.

And then, on the front of that same bag — in big, bold, unavoidable design — they put “America’s Coffee” and a full-color American flag. The complaint frames this arrangement with devastating clarity: BRCC “buried” the truth while “simultaneously highlighting the unqualified Made in USA advertising on the front.” They knew. The side label proves they knew. The choice to put the flag on the front anyway was not an oversight. It was a business decision.

The entire coffee production chain that BRCC outsources is not trivial. The lawsuit documents it in forensic detail: seedlings grown in shaded nurseries for years before bearing fruit, coffee cherries hand-picked one by one because they don’t ripen at the same time, fruit separated by weight in water channels and by size in rotating drums, pulped by machine, fermented in tanks for up to 48 hours, dried on outdoor tables for weeks, milled, sorted by an electronic color sorter, bagged, stored for months, then shipped overseas to BRCC’s roasters. All of that. Outside the United States. Every step. And BRCC’s contribution to that chain is: turn on the oven.

Legal Receipts

Straight from the Complaint. Word for Word.

“By labeling their coffee as ‘America’s Coffee’ and prominently displaying the American flag on the front of the bags, Defendants are misleading and deceiving consumers in California and New York into believing that Defendants sell American coffee when in fact they do not.”

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 4 — Filed November 3, 2025

“On the side of their coffee bag, in inconspicuous lettering, Defendants reveal the truth: that they only roast their coffee in the United States. But by burying that statement on the side label while simultaneously highlighting the unqualified Made in USA advertising on the front of the label, knowing that this Made in USA advertising is false and/or deceptive, Defendants engaged in conduct likely to mislead reasonable consumers.”

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 66 — Filed November 3, 2025

“Nearly the entire process for making Defendants’ coffee—from growing and harvesting the coffee cherries to producing the dried, green coffee beans—occurs outside of the United States.”

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 46 — Filed November 3, 2025

“When Plaintiffs’ counsel asked if Defendants were interested in discussing a pre-filing resolution as envisioned by the CLRA, Defendant’s in-house counsel replied with a single word: ‘No.’ To date, Defendants have not taken corrective action or otherwise complied with § 1782(c).”

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 80 — Filed November 3, 2025

“The practice only harms consumers and American manufacturers. Defendants’ practice is therefore also immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous, or substantially injurious to consumers. Plaintiff and the California Class could not have reasonably avoided their injury.”

Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 98 — Filed November 3, 2025

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality: The “Buy American” Tax

There is a specific economic harm hiding inside this story that rarely gets named directly. Working-class consumers who prioritize buying domestic products are not just exercising a preference — they are often making a financial sacrifice. They choose the more expensive product because they believe the premium funds American jobs, American farms, American workers. That belief is the entire emotional and economic contract of “Made in USA” marketing.

BRCC exploited that contract. The lawsuit establishes that “Defendants are able to charge a premium and increase demand for their coffee in part because of their Made in USA advertising.” That is the company’s own implicit concession. The premium exists. People paid it. And the product that justified it — American-grown, American-processed coffee — does not exist in a single BRCC bag. The money went to a $370 million (enough to fund free school lunches for 74,000 children for an entire year) publicly traded company, and the American workers those customers thought they were supporting got nothing.

The lawsuit makes a point that cuts even deeper: this fraud “harms consumers and American manufacturers.” Every domestic coffee producer — specifically the Hawaiian growers who actually grow U.S.-origin coffee — competes in a marketplace distorted by BRCC’s lie. When BRCC captures the patriot-shopper dollar with a foreign product, a real American producer loses a sale. This is what concentrated market deception does. It does not just steal from individual consumers. It warps entire competitive landscapes against the honest players.

The class is estimated at tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. The lawsuit seeks actual damages, restitution, and disgorgement of profits. Under New York law alone, each class member can claim actual damages or $500 (almost a week of groceries for a family of four), whichever is greater. If you multiply $500 by even 50,000 people, you are looking at $25 million (enough to send 1,250 students to a public university for four years) in minimum statutory damages in New York alone. The math on a national scale is brutal — and BRCC chose “No” when given the chance to avoid it.

Public Health: Transparency as a Safety Issue

The source material does not allege contamination or physical harm to consumers. The public health dimension here operates at the systemic level: when companies successfully normalize deceptive country-of-origin labeling, they erode the consumer’s ability to make informed decisions about what they put in their bodies and what supply chains they fund.

Sourcing transparency is a genuine food-safety mechanism. Consumers who want to avoid certain agricultural practices, pesticide exposures, or labor conditions tied to specific countries of origin depend on accurate labeling to make those choices. A company that teaches the market that “America’s Coffee” can mean “roasted in America” degrades the informational infrastructure that all food labeling depends on. The FTC’s 2024 guidance cited in the complaint was written precisely because this degradation has real consequences beyond individual purchases.

The Cost of a Lie

What Now?

The Watchlist: Who Should Be Investigating This

Corporate Roles to Watch

• Chief Executive Officer, Black Rifle Coffee Company LLC / BRC Inc.: The decision to place “America’s Coffee” on the front label while burying the roast-only disclosure on the side was a strategic branding decision made at the executive level. That person should answer for it in court and in public.
• Chief Marketing Officer, BRC Inc.: The flag, the slogan, the placement — these are marketing decisions. The CMO owns the campaign that the lawsuit calls false and deceptive.
• General Counsel / In-House Counsel, BRC Inc.: This is the person who read the CLRA demand letter in September 2025 and typed “No” in response to a settlement discussion. That choice cost the company the opportunity to fix this quietly. Now it’s a federal class action.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you bought Black Rifle Coffee in California or New York, you are likely a member of the proposed class. The lawsuit seeks damages for everyone who purchased BRCC bags while relying on the “America’s Coffee” and flag marketing. You do not need to have saved receipts to potentially participate — the lawsuit is seeking BRCC’s own sales records.

Talk to your neighbors. This case exists because two regular people — one in Turlock, California and one in Kingston, New York — decided the lie was worth fighting. The class action system only works when people who were wronged show up. Share this story with anyone who has ever bought BRCC products because they thought they were buying American.

Support your actual local coffee roasters. The real Made-in-America coffee industry — the Hawaiian growers, the small domestic roasters who are transparent about their sourcing — competes against BRCC’s flag-wrapped marketing machine every single day. Your dollar is a vote. Spend it where the transparency is real.

Pressure the FTC directly. The Commission published comprehensive Made in USA guidance in July 2024. A complaint this detailed, citing that exact guidance, is an invitation for federal enforcement action. Use the FTC’s online complaint portal at ReportFraud.ftc.gov to add your voice to the record.