Disruptive “Frothy Gossip”

I got wrapped up in something yesterday in the coffee world that perhaps I should have just ignored. Fact was, it was one email and one text message I received (out of several) that made me take to twitter and post a tweet about a gossip rumour that Sprudge.com posted about Coca Cola possibly buying a US-based roasting company that Sprudge called “3rd Wave”.

And to be honest, I think I’m doing too much again, giving too much credence to something our industry could do less with: gossip. But here goes.

I posted a tweet saying “Wow, this Intelly rumour won’t end. 7 texts and 3 emails already. AFAIK, no truth to it, but who knows. Things are shaking up everywhere.”

I said that as far as I know, there’s no truth to the rumour. I didn’t even link to Sprudge’s commentary on purpose in a vain attempt to deflect things. I followed up immediately with another tweet saying I have no insider knowledge about Intelligentsia on anything, and when Steve Morrissey posted, stating the company in question was not Intelligentsia, I retweeted that immediately.

In retrospect I should have not said anything, but it was one email and one text that prompted me to say something publicly, since my twitter account gets out to a fair amount of coffee people and I felt the false rumour was gaining momentum.

I was blissfully unaware of the gossip posted until my phone started humming with notification messages for texts and DMs and Facebook emails. I’m going to reprint them all here verbatim (my apologies to those who sent me these - I’m removing all identifying info since I don’t have permission to repost), but I have to (also) remove any especially speculative (or real) insider info shared about the roaster most seemed to be assuming was the ‘3rd wave roaster’.

Hows things in van.? Hear about coke company buying a 3rdwave roaster? think its intelli?

Hey, who dyou think Sprudge is talking about with cocacola? Is this part of Chris Tyler Mike leaving intelligentsia?

 (same as #1 above) _________ says it is intelli because Doug’s moving to Cali.

Who do u think cocacola is buying? Seen sprudges tweet?

(same person) thinking intellligentsia or maybe counter culture. intelli probly

Hey man have you checked out sprudge.com today? Talkin about a roaster being bought by Coke!!! Gotta be Intelligentsia since theyre big enough. Hear anything?

Then an email from a friend:

Hi Mark.

Sprudge site posted something interesting today about Coca-Cola buying a famous coffee company. Do you think it is Intelligentsia? (redacted some off the record stuff about Intelly, offered as reasoning) plus their stars recently left. I dont know what other company it could be.. Do you think its even true?

Turning out to be an interesting year hey?

Then a few more text messages.

catch sprudg today? my moneys on inteligentsia

hey buddy your ear is to the ground most of the time. hear any infor about coca-cola buying 3rd wave roaster? thinking it is either intelligentsia or counter culture

One more email, and to be truthful, this email was the impetus for me to post my tweet saying I don’t think it’s Intelligentsia. These kind of rumours are at best slighly disruptive, and at worst damaging to businesses. Here’s the email.

Hello CoffeeGeek

I read news today on http://sprudge.com/frothy-gossip-big-wheel-third-wave-roasting-company-in-talks-with-coca-cola.html.  Wondering if you know what the company is.  Jerry (omitted) who you might know as (omitted) on Coffee Geek is my main barista and told us about it and says speculation is it could be Intelligentsia.  We are an Intelligentsia customer but I was not able to get in touch with them today as of yet.  Jerry says have close ties to them and I am wondering if you have heard anything about this.  He’s been reading all the blogs and twitter and your forums today looking for news.  we are concerned most naturally because I run a very indie caffe and have no major label corporate brands in our caffe.  It’s something we take pride in.

If you have any news or wouldnt mind putting me in touch with someone else at Intelligentsia in Chiacgo I would appreciate it a lot.

Then one more text message that was another impetus for me to post something publicly:

(same as #2 way above) dude we are so dropping intelli if it is them. what have you heard?

There was a third email, but it was full of major insider stuff and speculative information regarding Intelligentsia; to reprint it here would be basically a blank email if I did so (and omitted the insider references).

After I posted a tweet about this stuff, I got a few more DMs and one more txt - one person said

so u don’t think its true that one big corporation is buying a smaller one than. who else big enough for coke to have eyes on?

Anyway, looking back I should have left well alone. But when sorta famous influencer types (one of the texters above) sends me a message about it, and if two people are worried enough that they may drop a roaster, I felt the need to post something publicly on a Sunday afternoon.

And more irony this eve. Sprudge has posted a followup with Doug Zell stating it’s not Intelligentsia (good stuff) and my tweet (quoted above) prominently featured in the article, which kind of paints me as the rumour starter (maybe I’m reading that wrong), when my intent was to put the brakes on stuff people were speculating on and asking me about. I guess some days you can’t win. I’m sure there’ll be a few winning commentaries tied to that posting in a few days from my main Internet stalker too.

At the end of the day, I just think our industry could do with a bit less frothy gossip all around. I guess next time I’ll know better and let chips fall where they may and reply to all the messages with “I don’t know - ask the company”.