The Coffee4Kids "Nitro-Tricycle" brings the company's nitrogen-infused cold brew coffee to local events. 

For the past three months, Sean McDonell has been on a mission.

It starts every morning at 3 a.m. with a cup of nitrogen-infused coffee, the first of five he’ll drink throughout the day. Then, after a workout and some administrative tasks, the Coffee4Kids founder loads his car with coffee and hits the streets of Bend.

He travels 20 miles each day, delivering free, two-ounce samples of Coffee4Kids coffee to hundreds of Bend households. By March 15 he will have made deliveries to 39,000 households, enough to caffeinate the entire city of Bend.

“I’m a nutbag,” McDonell says with a laugh. “I decided I needed to hyper-accelerate the company, so I chose to give coffee to every single household in Bend.”

The monumental undertaking required a special team of packers and cost McDonell $70,000. He’s gone through three pairs of shoes and found himself in a handful of precarious situations.

“I’ve had two death threats, almost got skewered by a large deer and ran into a few mean dogs, but all in all it’s been pretty awesome,” McDonell says. “We have grown by 400% as a direct result of it, and it forced me and the company to evolve quickly in every department.”

McDonell started Coffee4Kids in 2012 after quitting his job as a financial advisor.

“I was miserable,” he says. “I have to do something I’m passionate about.”

McDonell, whose parents established the Mi Casa orphanage in El Salvador in 1989, has spent many summers in the Central American country famous for its coffee production. He began flying back to the United States with 150 pounds of coffee at a time, selling the beans door to door to raise money for his family’s orphanage. Eventually, the endeavor blossomed into a serious business. McDonell found an importer who helped him scale up operations. He had his beans roasted at Backporch Coffee Roasters in Bend before buying his own roaster and transforming his garage in southwest Bend into a roastery.

Coffee4Kids now imports 2,500 pounds of coffee per month, and one dollar of every pound of coffee sold is donated to Mi Casa. All of the company’s coffee products are available for sale online and can be purchased wholesale. The brand is carried by most major grocery chains in Central Oregon, including Market of Choice and Food 4 Less. Additionally, McDonell offers a full-coverage, zero-waste coffee service, primarily to local businesses that want to offer coffee to their customers and employees.

McDonell credits much of the company’s recent success to his “CaffeinateBend” campaign, and the many hours he and his employees have spent packaging and delivering free samples.

“It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done, and almost every person in Bend has seen our brand and tried our coffee,” he says. “I might even do it again next year.”

To learn more, visit coffee4kids.org.