Celebrities like Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren launch gourmet coffee lines

Stars are turning their love of java into a side business as they open cafes and lines of beans.

By Gina Pace

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

November 16, 2014

Get ready for a new kind of celebrity roast.

Hollywood heavyweights — including Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman and David Lynch — want to be in your morning coffee cup — the latest A-listers to join usual suspects such as Ralph Lauren and Martha Stewart who turn their love of java into a side business.

Here we go again. Stars have been hawking products since Archimedes sold a novel way of moving water from one place to another. More recently, Paul Newman set the standard for star products with his salad dressings, lemonade and pasta sauces, but the trend has continued with Francis Ford Coppola and Dan Aykroyd making wine, Elizabeth Hurley selling organic snack bars and jerky, and Jessica Alba hawking home products.

So now it’s big stars and coffee bars. You can be forgiven if you’d prefer to grind your ax rather than these stars’ beans.

“I understand being skeptical of celebrity coffee because it’s so obvious — people are so into coffee and so geeked out about it,” says Kate Krader, the restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine. “But for a lot of these celebrities, it’s a badge of good taste.”

Also, the celebs who are hawking beans aren’t cheesy reality stars merely selling their names in an endorsement deal, but rather celebrities at the top of their game who are perfectionists like Martha Stewart, the latest to consider coffee a good thing.

“Food is fashionable,” says Valerie Greenberg, a lifestyle and pop culture expert. “For many of them, it’s a hobby. And if you can make money off your hobby it’s an even bigger bonus.”

Stewart’s line of iced and ground coffee ULIVjava debuted in late July. It's made in conjunction with her long-time personal trainer Mary Tedesco and nutritionist Kathleen Schoen. The blends are fortified with green tea, yerba mate, and astragalus root, a member of the legume family traditionally used in Chinese medicine to help the immune system.

“The entire venture made sense to me,” Stewart says. “It’s coffee with benefits.”

Tedesco was inspired to create the drink in hopes of bringing a health benefit to her afternoon coffee. She and Schoen ran through many blends to get the flavor just right before approaching Stewart — who of course ordered up more testing.

“We tasted and tasted until it was right,” Stewart says.

Hugh Jackman and Dukale, a farmer in Ethiopia.

Around the same time, designer Ralph Lauren opened up his coffee shop Ralph in his flagship Fifth Ave. store. The mini-coffee bar sells regular drip ($2.50 a cup) and espresso ($3.50) made from Lauren’s blends made in conjunction with La Colombe in Philadelphia. Bags of the organic beans are also for sale.

It’s difficult to tell how keen Lauren is about his beans — he declined an interview for this story.

But others, especially Jackman and Robert De Niro’s wife Grace Hightower, are seriously into coffee as a form of philanthropy.

The seeds of Jackman’s interest in coffee were planted on a trip to Ethiopia as a World Vision Australia Ambassador, where he met a farmer named Dukale.

“I met his family and the community and saw first-hand how a little help goes a long way,” says Jackman, whose company is called Laughing Man Coffee. “But the help was not charity, the help was tools to trade, to grow and to do business. I promised to help.”

The “Wolverine” star partnered with David Steingard, whose family has roots in the coffee business, to create the Laughing Man line of coffees plus a cafés in Tribeca. Jackman donates 100% of his profits to charity, and the other investors in the brand donate about 50%, Steingard says.

“Our goal was simple,” Jackman says. “Create a sustainable business that can be grown and people can make a living, and also fund the Laughing Man Foundation so we can continue to support projects.”

Hightower’s line does similar work in Rwanda. The mother of two admits she knew nothing about the coffee business, but her interest was piqued after hearing Rwandan President Paul Kagame speak about “trade, not aid.”

When she visited the country in 2011, she found herself impressed by the crop.

“I was really surprised that it was as good as it was,” she says. “I didn’t even know coffee could taste that good.”

Grace Hightower’s Coffee of Rwanda launched in 2012 and is well respected for its bold, but not bitter, taste. Right now, the beans are sold mainly in the New York area, but nationally through Bed, Bath & Beyond.

But Hightower plans to open her own coffee shop in New York, plus one in Rwanda, early next year. After that, she hopes to get her African beans sold globally.

Rocker Joey Kramer of Aerosmith doesn’t have a philanthropic hook for his java — unless you count the important charity of improving worldwide coffee quality.

After years of drinking horrible coffee on the road, Kramer said he created his own brand in 2012 to help rid the country of over-roasted burnt-tasting coffee popularized by the nation’s largest chain.

Kramer is involved in all phases of the coffee production (minus the picking, of course), and insisted on single-origin coffees from Sumatra, Guatemala, and Ethiopia because he prefers to focus on the flavor profiles from one region at a time.

“As soon as people taste it they realize it’s not a rock ’n’ roll novelty of some sort,” he says. “It is high-quality gourmet coffee.”

Taste Kitchen

Thinking of buying a celebrity brew? The Daily News put some to the test:

Grace Hightower Coffees of Rwanda: Medium Dark Roast, 12 ounces for $12.50, coffeeofgrace.com.

Nice rich bold flavor. Distinct coffee bite without being bitter. Strong favorite of half the panel.

 “If this is what Bobby D. wakes up to every morning, sign me up,” says one taster. “Are you brewing for me? Are you brewing FOR ME?!”

Ralph’s Organic Drip Blend

This was the other frontrunner of the panel. Tasters noted how easy-drinking the blend was.

“It cuts down the bitterness and by the third sip, it’s as smooth as one of his cashmere sweaters,” says one taster of Ralph Lauren’s blend.

Joey Kramer’s Rockin’ & Roastin’ Organic Ground Sumatra Coffee: $9.99 for 12 ounces, rockinandroastin.com.

Good everyday coffee with a balanced flavor. Tasters said they’d definitely “Walk this Way” to get it — as long as it wasn’t too far out of the way.

“It’s nice to see a celebrity do something and not completely f--- it up,” said one taster.

Laughing Man Coffee: $12, laughingmancheckout.com

A fruity and bright coffee that was on the lighter side.

“Tasty, but smoother than I would have expected from a burly Aussie’s taste buds,” a panelist notes. “More Les Mis than X-Men.”

ULIVjava Martha Stewart: “Lean” organic ground coffee, $14.99, ulivjava.com.

“There’s a grassy quality to it,” says one taster, who immediately picked up on the hay-like Yerba Mate that is mixed in this coffee. Hard core java jonesers will hate Stewart’s blend, but is a palatable alternative for those who buy into the claims that herbs increase metabolism, burn fat and curb the appetite.