A short follow-up to my comment to Katrinka’s “Green Mountain Coffee Rackets” on 3/11/14 concerning H756 (aka Green Mountain Coffee K-cup exemption), back in March 2012, and its possible unintended consequences.
In case you haven’t seen the FreePress this morning:
Keurig [Green Mountain] and Peet’s plan to launch a selection of Peet’s K-Cup packs by the end of the summer. Keurig said Peet’s will continue to roast the beans for its K-Cup packs at its facility in Alameda, Calif., and the roasted beans will be transported to Keurig for grinding and packaging in K-Cup packs.
I don’t think this is quite what the Lege had in mind, do you? That a transnational holding company (Coca-Cola) might one day acquire Green Mountain Coffee and turn what was meant as a limited exemption for a valued local business into a nationally-expanding business plan, on Vermont’s dime. (Starbucks was admitted to the K-Cup club just hours before the announcement was made about Peet’s.)
http://www.burlingtonfreepress…
Just wait until Coca-Cola starts pressing for an exemption for on-site retail water bottling…
It seems inevitable with good little companies. They begin with high hopes, and when they take off, the vultures swoop in and transform them into unrecognizable bad actors, beholden to shareholders and with stock options dancing in their heads.
Cascadian Farms now owned by General Mills, I think; Tom’s of Maine held out longer than most but they too have been co-opted. On and on. That is one of the ways we’ve become a nation that prospers at the top at the expense of those below. Check out GMC’s facebook page- sick, sick.
On Keurig this am. Not final but likely going to happen?
One million dollars + right into fat pockets, via Vermont taxpayers.