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Queens Company "Jailhouse Coffee" Faces Backlash Over Prison-Themed Marketing
By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 26, 2015
Modified Apr 11, 2018
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Sep 26, 2015
Modified Apr 11, 2018
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Queens-based coffee roaster Jailhouse Coffee has been making light of incarceration on social media since March 2013. It has held demos in grocery stories across gentrifying Brooklyn, etched its logo on cars, and even solicited endorsements from Department of Correction employees.
But it wasn't until three days ago that Chad Kautzer, a University of Colorado professor who recently moved to Brooklyn on sabbatical, began circulating a Change.org petition urging the company to change its name and branding.
Kautzer first came across Jailhouse in a local grocery store. "I'm assuming, given the tone-deaf nature of their advertising, that they need some community education on the nature of solitary confinement," he told us this afternoon. "Clearly these products are being targeted at an audience that has no familiarity with it."
Jailhouse, which urges its customers to "make a break for it," says it was inspired by the proximity of its roasting facility to the Queens Correctional Facility. According to its website, "Legend has it that the roastery was built on the site of an 18th century jailhouse. There are no records confirming this but it's our story and we're sticking to it. Actually there is a 'bighouse' just near the roastery."
Each Jailhouse blend has a prison-related name—Good Behavior Organic Blend, Solitary Sumatra Organic—and accompanying prison-themed illustration: barbed wire, hands gripping prison bars and, for the Solitary Sumatra, hash marks to reflect the number of days spent in solitary confinement.
Chain Gang Espresso, which depicts silhouetted prisoners with balls chained to their ankles, references a practice that was common in the post-Civil War south.
Mother Jones recently counted 83 hashmarks in total on Jailhouse's Sumatra, pointing out that they "far surpass the 15 days the United Nations specifies as the maximum amount of time anyone should spend in solitary confinement."
Kautzer, who is planning to present Jailhouse with his petition and accompanying signatures in person, is taking Jailhouse's marketing no less seriously.
"Jailhouse Coffee makes light of incarceration and solitary confinement in its name, motto, and brands, so we're demanding that they change their name and advertising campaign," he wrote. "We live in a carceral state that breaks up families, devastates individuals, and reproduces structural inequality and racism. There can be no justification for profiting from this systemic form of injustice."
As of last April, Jailhouse had at least one diehard fan.
BRAND RECOGNITION. So I'm at a red light at the corner of Houston and Lafayette st in soho. This guy mark looks at the car and starts to approach. This video tells the rest of the story. Thanks mark Masefield! Fan number 1
Posted by Jailhouse Coffee on Saturday, April 12, 2014
We have reached out to Jailhouse for comment, and will update with any further information.
Tagged
branding
Jailhouse Coffee
Prison-Industrial Complex
queens
solitary confinement
Emma Whitford
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