OAN’s Taylor Tinsley
3:00 PM – Tuesday, July 18, 2023
Eight-year old Charlie Johnson launched Big Guns Coffee with her military veteran father T.Shane in 2021. Based in North Carolina, their business has been making sales all over the world after Charlie decided she wanted to become an entrepreneur overnight.
“She says ‘dad I wanted to start a business,’” T.Shane told One America News. “And I said ‘I’ll tell you what, if you can come up with a name and a logo then we’ll make it happen’… 20 minutes later I came back and she had come up with ‘Big Guns Coffee’ and drew the logo and put it all together and I was like wow.”
T.Shane, who is also a Marine Corps Veteran, motivational speaker, author and world record athlete, said that’s how it all started. He knew that was the “defining moment” to get behind such an inspiring young woman.
“He’s just done so many things,” Charlie said when asked about what encouraged her to come up with the idea. “So it’s like a brand to him but from me.”
“Coffee just happened to be the product,” T.Shane continued. “If she would have picked unicorns I guess I would have been in the unicorn farm business, but really it’s just an extension of what it is for a father to get behind his daughter and encourage her to be a business owner in one of the greatest countries in the world.”
The pair were able to give insight into their coffee making process. According to their website “each craft is roasted with passion, resilience, and a whole lot of love.” T.Shane shared Charlie gets up at four o’clock every morning and works non-stop seven days a week during the summer.
“So we get this green bean… and we do it in our house so the whole place smells like coffee,” Charlie said. “We have this little roasting pot and you put it in there for about 30 minutes, it gets darker and darker depending on which roast it is.”
They’ve created an impressive selection of 38 coffee blends starting at just $18.99 and also emphasized they recycle. In unison Charlie and T.Shane said “we grow it, roast it, serve it, and recycle it!”
The father-daughter duo also prides themselves in being able to create North Carolina’s first-ever hydroponic coffee farm. T.Shane said the climate doesn’t sustain the ability to grow coffee where they’re located. He later learned about hydroponics and realized it was “the future of farming” the more he became involved with it.
According to the National Agriculture Library, hydroponics is “the technique of growing plants using a water-based nutrient solution rather than soil, and can include an aggregate substrate, or growing media, such as vermiculite, coconut coir, or perlite.
“People can come out and at one point harvest coffee,” T.Shane told OAN. “We process on site, we roast on site and serve on site so that you get the same experience you would if you went to a farm in South America, Africa, or Costa Rica, but we’re right here in the farming community.”
Charlie and T.Shane note side effects of their coffee may include “uncontrollable bursts of laughter, an irresistible urge to share dad jokes, and an addiction to the awesomeness” of their delicious cup of joe.
Big Guns Coffee also sells other items and merchandise including K-Cups, soap, T-0hirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, and hats.
Be sure to check out their website at https://www.biggunscoffee.com/
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