By Heather Miller Garcia, Co-Founder of Liberty Call Kettle Corn Co.
There are easier ways to start a food business. You can choose a product, build a logo, find a few events and start selling. But when we created Liberty Call Kettle Corn Co., we wanted to build something with a purpose that existed long before the first kernel ever hit the kettle.
We wanted to build a company around service.
Military service has been woven through our family for generations. Across our family history are ten generations of men and women who answered the call to serve. Today, that tradition continues. My daughter serves in the United States Navy, and I now experience service from a perspective I never fully understood before…as a military mom. My partner and Liberty Call co-founder, Keith Brooks, serves as a first responder and now helps train the next generation entering that profession.
There is something different about watching someone you love answer that call.
When it is your child who puts on the uniform, the meaning of service changes. You feel enormous pride, but you also begin to understand the things families quietly carry with them: the distance, the worry you learn not to talk about every day, and the realization that someone you love has chosen a life that may ask them to put duty ahead of everything else, including the life you gave them.
Loving a first responder brings another perspective. You understand that when others are facing their worst moments, the person you love may be the one being called toward them.
So for us, service, sacrifice and family are not abstract ideas. They are part of our family history, and they are part of our everyday life. We know that when someone puts on a uniform, an entire family serves alongside them. And we know that service takes many forms, from military members serving far from home to first responders whose families understand the responsibilities and risks that come with answering the call.
We have become very good at saying, “Thank you for your service.” It is an important phrase, but gratitude can become almost automatic if we are not careful. Real remembrance asks more of us.
It asks us to learn the stories. To understand the deployments and separations. To acknowledge the spouse holding everything together at home. To recognize the parent who watches a child leave for military service and learns to live with a different kind of worry.
It asks us to appreciate the first responder who walks into the emergency everyone else is trying to escape. To remember those who never came home. And to understand that service can leave a mark long after the uniform is put away.
That understanding became the foundation of Liberty Call.
Yes, we make kettle corn and specialty treats. We travel to concerts, festivals, fairs and community celebrations across the country. But the food is simply the vehicle. The mission is the reason we show up.
Liberty Call was created to honor active-duty military members, veterans, first responders and the families who stand behind them. We want people who have served their country or their community to encounter our company and immediately understand one thing:
We see you. We remember. And we are grateful.
That commitment shows up in tangible ways. Through our Hero Salute, we recognize those who have served. Through our In Their Honor initiative, we preserve individual stories of military service. We are also proud corporate supporters of Wounded Warrior Project and continue looking for meaningful ways to support military members, veterans, first responders and their families.
Liberty Call also recognizes the first responders whose service happens here at home. Their service may look different from military service, but the commitment to step forward and put service before self comes from the same place.
There is an important difference between using patriotism as branding and allowing patriotism to shape the way a company actually behaves. We want Liberty Call to earn the right to carry the imagery and message that surround our brand.
Our name itself was chosen with intention. In military tradition, liberty call represents the moment when duty temporarily gives way to freedom, a chance to reconnect with family, friends, community and ordinary life.
Those ordinary moments are easy to take for granted.
A summer concert. A county fair. Families laughing together. Kids carrying cotton candy. That freedom to simply enjoy ordinary life exists because generations of people were willing to protect it.
It also exists because, every day in communities across this country, first responders are willing to step forward when something goes wrong. While most of us experience an emergency as one of the worst moments of our lives, for a first responder it may simply be the next call.
And they answer it anyway.
That is what Liberty Call means to us.
It is why gatherings centered around family, community, tradition and shared experience feel like such a natural home for our company. Wherever people come together to enjoy an afternoon, celebrate something they love or simply spend time with the people who matter to them, there is an opportunity to remember those whose service helps make those moments possible.
When someone walks up to our booth, we certainly want them to leave saying, “That was incredible kettle corn.” But we hope something else happens too.
Maybe they notice a story about a service member. Maybe a veteran receives a Hero Salute and realizes someone still remembers what they gave. Maybe a Vietnam veteran receives the welcome home he should have received decades ago.
Maybe a firefighter, law enforcement officer, EMT or other first responder realizes that what they do every day is seen and appreciated too.
Maybe someone sees the Liberty Call name and thinks, even for a moment, about the people who made that afternoon of freedom possible.
A food company cannot repay military service. A bag of kettle corn cannot adequately thank someone for serving their country, spending months away from family, carrying wounds or living with the lasting consequences of service. Nor can it repay a first responder for the risks taken, difficult calls answered or experiences carried home long after a shift has ended.
We know that.
But gratitude does not have to be equal to the sacrifice in order to be meaningful. Sometimes it simply needs to be sincere.
Liberty Call is still writing its story. We certainly hope the company grows, but size will never be the only measure of whether we succeeded.
Our measure of success will be whether we create more opportunities to tell these stories, recognize those who serve, support their families and remind people that freedom and safety should never be taken for granted.
Because Liberty Call was never really about popcorn. It was built around a much bigger idea:
Service should be recognized. Sacrifice should be remembered. Families who serve should be supported. And those who answer the call, whether for their country or for their community, should never have to wonder whether the people they serve remember them.
That is the company we are trying to build. And if we can make something delicious along the way, all the better.
About the Author
Heather Miller Garcia is the co-founder of Liberty Call Kettle Corn Co., a military and first responder-focused specialty food company dedicated to honoring service, preserving stories and supporting those who answer the call.
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