Building a Performance Engine for a Culture-First Coffee Brand

A Coffee Called Folks isn’t just another coffee brand.

Founded by Josh Levine and Brent Rollins, the brand blends specialty coffee with hip-hop culture through artist collaborations and community-led storytelling. Its flagship blend, The General’s Ritual, launched in collaboration with rapper Kevin Gates, giving the brand a distinctive identity in the D2C coffee space.

As the business prepared to scale, the challenge wasn’t awareness, it was building a performance marketing system that could grow revenue while staying true to the brand.

That’s where Black Coffee Media came in.

The Challenge

The objective was simple but ambitious:

Maintain a strong 2+ ROAS, scale campaigns responsibly, and build a system capable of consistently pushing performance beyond that benchmark.

Achieving this meant balancing acquisition, retention, creative testing, and budget optimisation without losing the cultural identity that made the brand unique.

How We Scaled It

Rather than increasing ad spend aggressively, we focused on building a stronger performance system.

Meta Ads became the primary acquisition channel, supported by Shopify Email to improve retention and repeat purchases. Accurate tracking, structured audience segmentation, and continuous optimisation ensured every decision was backed by performance data.

Campaigns targeted men aged 25–54 across the United States, using interest-based targeting around artists with audiences similar to Kevin Gates to reach people most likely to connect with the brand.

Instead of spreading budgets across the entire catalogue, we focused on the brand’s hero product, The General’s Ritual while testing merchandise such as mugs, hoodies, caps, and T-shirts with smaller budgets.

Creative testing became a major growth driver. We continuously tested collaboration-led creatives, product-focused videos, and user-generated content, scaling the formats that delivered the strongest results while regularly refreshing creatives to maintain performance.

Alongside campaign management, we built automated Shopify email flows, shared weekly performance insights, and continuously refined budgets and targeting based on campaign learnings.

The Results

The combination of disciplined campaign management and continuous optimisation helped transform performance into sustainable growth.

Campaign Highlights

• Consistent 3+ ROAS
• Steady month-on-month growth
• Multiple products sold out
• Improved retention through Shopify Email automation
• A scalable performance marketing system built for long-term growth

Rather than chasing short-term wins, the focus remained on building a repeatable growth engine that could continue scaling with the business.

The Takeaway

Scaling a culture-first brand requires more than increasing ad budgets.

It requires understanding the audience, continuously testing creative ideas, and building a performance system that grows alongside the brand.

For A Coffee Called Folks, that meant combining Meta Ads, creative experimentation, audience segmentation, and retention marketing into one cohesive strategy, resulting in consistent 3+ ROAS and a stronger foundation for future growth.

If you’re looking for a Shopify performance marketing agency, a D2C coffee brand marketing agency, or a partner that knows how to scale culture-led brands through measurable performance, Black Coffee Media can help build your next growth story.