Should Serious Coffee Lovers Care About Celebrity-Branded Coffees?

Our notions of celebrity in the U.S. have expanded over the decades. Being a Hollywood icon is no longer the only gateway to stardom, as evidenced by the growing pool of “influencers” from many walks of life. From YouTube trendsetters to musicians powerful enough to tip various political scales, the minimum basic requirements are a smartphone, a bit of charisma and an audience. Many household names have entered the coffee space, which, by our reckoning, is quite a mysterious landscape to them. Most celebrity-branded coffees we tasted were so underwhelming that the handful that rose above a score of 87 seemed like small miracles.

At Coffee Review, our goal is to help you find wonderful coffees to drink, coffees we can recommend wholeheartedly. As such, our reports lean heavily into praise wherever it is warranted. Instead of writing negative reviews, we tend to skip over coffees that don’t perform well on the cupping table. But when a growing subcategory of the retail coffee market is getting by on the fumes of marketing dollars and adjacency to famous people alone, it’s time to blow the whistle: With very few exceptions, celebrity-branded coffees are more hype than haute.

The Star-Studded (Ahem) Lineup

We cupped 30 coffees currently available to consumers that have some overt relationship to a celebrity, broadly defined as a well-known public figure. Of those, eight scored 87 or higher, while the range for the remaining 22 was 78 to 86. (For us, anything below 80 is commodity-grade coffee, rather than specialty.) Two of the top three are roaster collaborations with chefs, and the remainder of the top eight range from an athlete-driven brand to an iconic fashion designer’s coffee to two actual bona fide Hollywood stars who drink the stuff and have lent their names to brands. But how much do any of these high-profile folks really know about coffee? And how involved with these brands are they, anyway?

The Relationship Between Quality and Transparency

It might stand to reason that transparency and quality are often correlated; in this context, it proves to be true. The majority of the celebrity-blessed coffees we cupped were as generic as can be — not in terms of the packaging and branding but the beans inside the catchy (often kitschy) bags, boxes and canisters. For people who love coffee, the story of its origin is part of the pleasure, and if a brand doesn’t highlight the story of the coffee beyond its country of origin, then there’s likely “no there there,” to quote Gertrude Stein. Also, most of these brands are ghost-roasted, i.e., “white-label” roasted by an unnamed company for the brand. Those coffees whose roasters are named on the packaging tended to score higher, which makes sense, as their brands are also on the line. The higher-scoring coffees, by and large, also had backstories on roasters’ websites, from specific origin information to, in some cases, details about the farmers who grew the coffees. And the relationship between the roaster and the celebrity, in these cases, is also more transparent.

Eight Celebrity-Branded Coffees We Can (More or Less) Recommend

Clear winners at the top of our list are two coffees (transparently) roasted by Equator Coffees. And their respective attached celebrities are chefs: Thomas Keller, arguably one of the most highly regarded chefs in the world, and Brandon Jew, who’s part of the cadre of younger U.S. chefs making waves.

Double Happiness by Chef Brandon Jew (93) is an Equator-roasted coffee in the company’s Chef’s Collection. Double Happiness is a symbol that represents joy and unity, and proceeds from sales of this coffee benefit Cut Fruit Collective, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization whose work supports Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. It’s a classic washed Ethiopia with notes of bright stone fruit, balanced acidity and rich cocoa nib notes. This was Equator’s first chef collaboration that featured a single-origin coffee rather than a blend.

There are five Thomas Keller-Equator coffee collaborations, and the one we review here is the Sense of Urgency Blend (92), named for the sign that hangs under a clock at The French Laundry, Keller’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant. Keller says, “I ask my team to come to work with this sense each day, and it goes beyond just making sure we are prepared and ready to serve. It’s about speed, but it also means investing in what we do with a sense of importance.” The coffee is a blend of Sumatra (Koperasi Ketiara Cooperative), Colombia (La Rosa Women’s Group) and Kenya (smallholding farmers), roasted to medium-dark to highlight the blend’s sweet earthiness and floral nature.

Ted Stachura, Equator’s Director of Coffee, says Equator’s relationship with Keller goes back to the late 90s and that this coffee is designed to celebrate The French Laundry’s 30^th anniversary. One dollar from each bag of this blend sold will go to OLE Health, which has been providing high-quality health care in and around Napa since 1972.

Also in at 92 is BigFace’s Burundi Heza Station, whose presentation is about as blingy as can be in the world of coffee. BigFace is pro basketball player Jimmy Butler’s lifestyle brand, whose genesis dates back to the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, when Butler made coffee in his hotel room and charged fellow players $20 a cup. Akin to the heavy bottles of reinforced glass that house certain $350 cult California Cabs, this mere 8 ounces of coffee is similarly overpackaged in a large, thick, shiny silver box with a raised typeface for the logo (a sort of smiley face cup of coffee) and brand name in all caps, and a label with tasting notes and a QR code for “full analysis,” which just means information about the producer, farm, processing — and, oddly, geographical coordinates. Inside the reusable box is a thick, translucent bag of coffee with the coffee details repeated. While the brand has collaborated with various roasters, it’s not clear who roasts its core products.

This is a nice, spice-toned coffee with notes of nutmeg and baking chocolate, but given that other roasters sell the same coffee for $20 to $26 for 10 ounces — and this one retails at $40 for 8 ounces — it’s probably safe to say that you’re paying a lot for this packaging and virtual proximity to Butler. Make of it what you will. It certainly is a twist on the concept of “startup.”

A Legit Women-Farmed 91 From Sofia Vergara

Colombian-American actress and CoverGirl model Sofia Vergara sought to find smallholding women farmers in her homeland, and they are profiled on the Dios Mio website, Vergara’s online coffee outpost. While the three coffees — light, medium and dark — have no obvious differentiation beyond roast, we do know that they’re all women-farmed and roasted in Miami Shores, Florida. The medium-roast version is crisply chocolaty, sweetly nutty, and quite respectable in terms of balance and aromatics. At $14.99 for 12 ounces, it’s also a great value. (The company sells a lot of ground coffee; don’t buy that, as it will likely arrive stale given that oxygen in the whole-bean bag we tested was at 13.9 percent. It should be at zero percent, or close to it.)

Two Solid 90s

Kyle McLachlan, of Twin Peaks and Sex and the City fame, is known as a wine and coffee lover, and his partnership with Walla Walla Roastery, called Brown Bear Melange (aka Kyle’s Blend) is just $14 for a full pound of coffee (which makes one consider how much the farmers were paid), and it’s a surprisingly rich, chocolaty dark roast with little bitter downside. Its sweet smokiness is an old-school pleasure that also works well in cappuccino format. Pro-tip: Brew an extra-strong batch, say a 12:1 water-to-coffee ratio, chill it down, and add ice and whole milk for a stout summer afternoon pick-me-up. There are photos of the actor with the roasters, which makes it seem like he really does drink this coffee. It’s better branding than the aspirational bling effect, for sure.

On the flipside of McLachlan’s neo-noir screen image is Mr. Polo himself, Ralph Lauren, the legendary classic American designer whose eponymous brand is perhaps most notable for the invention of the polo shirt, which was, is and always will be synonymous with “preppy” fashion. His empire entered the coffee space when it opened its first café in New York in 2014, and the branding — from bags to swag — is on point: austere, regal, with a font treatment that evokes the 1950s East Coast sailing culture. The coffee, too, delivers exactly that vibe. While we don’t know what’s in the bag (besides coffees from Central and South America), we know it was roasted by La Colombe, and that alone — naming the roaster — further legitimizes the concept. Ralph’s Roast tastes like excellent diner coffee — briskly sweet, nut-toned, gently earthy, and just dandy black or doctored up. It’s a versatile cup that pleases a wide range of palates in its un-fancy but familiar profile.

A Middlin’ Trio: Celebrity Brands That Could Have Done Better With Their Resources

It’s not as if scores in the range of 83 to 88 are bad; if these coffees were an English paper, they’d earn Bs. It’s just that with the kinds of resources that folks like Robert Downey, Jr. and Emma Chamberlain have, forgive me for wanting a bit more effort in the quality department.

Downey Jr.’s brand, Happy, which he co-founded with Craig Dubitsky of Method cleaning products, seems like a vague concept. The website lists the young, smiling team members (first names only) who make Happy happen. It’s true that the company also “partners with” the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but nowhere have I found what that actually means. (Emails to the brand were not returned.) What really bugs me is the packaging. I don’t mind the idea of pitching coffee as part of a happy life, but the big plastic bins these coffees are packaged in don’t really seem in line with Happy’s stated sustainability efforts. Are they plant-based? I don’t think so. The Magnificent Medium Roast (88) — said to be, like all the brand’s coffees, roasted by “the world’s largest vertically integrated coffee roaster” — is briskly sweet, gently nutty and wood framed. Just fine, but not likely to evoke paroxysms of joy.

Emma Chamberlain is a YouTube phenom clearly devoted to her coffee and its accessories. The coffee itself is …. meh. One of the whole-bean coffees in her line, Social Dog (87), is a dark-roast blend of coffee from Peru and Nicaragua pitched as a medium roast. It’s a gently drying, sweetly nutty cup, but there’s not much else to it beyond the absence of defects. And while Chamberlain’s name and face are all over the branding, it’s not at all clear who does the actual work of the business. She does have the recipes down if you’re into such things as “cinnamon bun lattes.”

We also cupped three Central Perk Coffees, the Friends-themed coffee shop and brand from celeb chef Tom Colicchio. I sure like the guy’s food, but he’s gone far afield with his foray into coffee. The How You Doin’ Blend, which ostensibly has a nice proletariat appeal, scored highest out of the three at 83, i.e., the low end of specialty where cup quality is concerned. Sourced from Colombia and Brazil, it’s like a Brazil-heavy blend, as it is exceedingly nut-toned to the point of monotony, with wood notes that lean more wood pulp than fresh forest.

Nice Try, But Definitely No Cigar

Two celebrity brands stand out for their lack of care regarding coffee quality, Hanx and Rudy.

We don’t know anyone who doesn’t love Tom Hanks, but his coffee brand, Hanx, is a sad state of sensory affairs. The good news is that, like Paul Newman’s line of products, 100 percent of proceeds go to support worthy causes, in this case, nonprofits serving U.S. military veterans and their families. The bad news is that the coffee isn’t really drinkable. We could only get our hands on the Hanx First Class Joe, whose ground format didn’t help its blind-cupping chances. At a score of 79, we detected defects that prevented us from classifying this one as specialty coffee.

Rudy’s Coffee, which is Rudy Giuliani’s brand, launched just after he was indicted in Arizona on conspiracy charges to overturn the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. We rated both the Morning Coffee and the Bold Coffee at 78, as they were flat, acrid, burnt and bitter. Forgive our cynicism, but this seems clearly like a money grab, and with Giuliani’s mug (pun intended) taking up three-quarters of the large, two-pound bag space, we think it’s a coffee only a mother (meaning his mother) could love. (Sprudge reported just last month that the roaster responsible for the Rudy’s lineup is also bankrupt.)

Sigh … Celebrity-Branded Coffees Are Nothing to Write Home About 

It was an interesting exercise to meticulously blind-cup these 30 coffees, but we only found a few to truly recommend. Hopefully, future collabs backed by big bucks will hire coffee professionals to bring better products to market, as well as pay farmers higher prices.