©2020 Saratoga Photographer.com
By Andrea Harwood Palmer
Death Wish Coffee Co. has added a vice president of supply chain to its staff as the company continues to grow.
Jason Mazzotti joins the Saratoga County business from GlobalFoundries, where he led global materials procurement. He will be in charge of the manufacturing plant, working closely with the warehouse team.
The hire was part of three new positions created in the company. Death Wish promoted former wholesale director Eric Donovan to vice president of business development, and former human resources director Lindsey Speech to vice president of talent & culture.
“We are growing very rapidly,” said Shannon Sweeney, marketing manager. “Despite everything that has been going on the last few months, the demand for coffee has gone up. We’ve been laying the foundation for these positions for years, especially for someone to manage our supply chain. It was time to expand our executive team.”
“He’ll help us find the gaps in our supply chain and make sure we’re a well-oiled machine, all the time,” she said of Mazzotti. “We have a lot of moving parts, whether it’s from importing green coffee to working with partners to help us roast, grind and package coffee. We needed someone to oversee all of that. Jason’s background in international procurement really stood out to us. We knew he would be a huge asset for us as we continue to experience growth.”
“We’ve never had someone focused on the entire supply chain, from the green coffee bean all the way to the end user,” Chief Operating Officer Mike Pilkington said. “His scope, his experience working across many teams, is something that internally we hadn’t had that expertise in the past.”
Death Wish brought on Pilkington late last year as the company’s first ever chief operating officer. He was previously president of Sysco Albany and Sysco Western Minnesota, and vice president of sales for Sysco Detroit.
The coffee company also developed an advisory board made up of experts in the industry. The board includes Jim Amos of Sysco, John Keller of the Jahnel Group, Emily Coburn of Coburn’s Inc., Joseph Navin of Forward Alliance Resource Group LLC and Duncan Wardle of the Walt Disney Co.
With many consumers now purchasing groceries online, Death Wish Coffee Co. is focusing on direct-to-consumer sales. Death Wish has always had an online sales presence and is now directing more energy to that method of sales.
Said Sweeney, “We’ve been expanding rapidly with our wholesale. We’re in over 11,000 grocery stores. We’re the number-one selling coffee on Amazon. We have our own e-commerce channel. We’re making sure those platforms are supported in whatever way they need to be.” The company is “making sure that we have everything we need internally to support our goals.”
“Right now, we’re focused on what we’ve always been focused on—providing the world’s strongest coffee to our customers, above and beyond just highly caffeinated coffee,” Sweeney said. “From where we source it to how its packaged, we want everything to be customer driven. Our customers are our number one value, so anything we can do to make sure they’re happy, that’s what we focus on.
“It’s been an exciting time for us. The fact that we announced three new VP hires, two internal and one new—it reinforces to us and the community that we’re growing. We’re so proud to be part of this community that’s been so supportive of us. We’re really excited to see what happens as we grow.”
Death Wish was founded in 2012 and gained national recognition when it won a free Super Bowl commercial in 2016. Death Wish has more than tripled its annual gross revenue since then, according to the company.
The coffee continues to be made at the Death Wish facility in Round Lake.
More information for Death Wish Coffee Co. can be found online at www.deathwishcoffee.com.