For centuries, coffee has been used to divine fortunes. Soothsayers with a knack for tasseography have long peered into the leftover grounds from a cup of Turkish coffee to foretell the coffee drinker’s future. In modern times, coffee tasseography is still in practice, but it is no longer the only way for the beverage to predict what is ahead, especially for those in the tech space. If you want to know about the health of a company, check their coffee game.
Take for example Uber. After going public in May, the ride-hailing service that Tech Crunch describes as “delivering pitiful levels of take-home pay to the hundreds of thousands of US independent contractors” has seen their stock price plummet by nearly 30 percent. And according to the Greenwich Times, employees—the corporate ones, not the drivers already getting shit on—are starting to see cuts to their amenities, including their coffee.
Back in the golden days of the Ubez, employees at the Bay Area headquarters were lousy with good coffee thanks to offerings from Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters. But with the falling stock prices—and the #DeleteUber scandal from which they haven’t yet fully recovered—Uber has switched coffee vendors to something more… robust; they’re slinging Starbucks now.
And it’s not just coffee. Per the Greenwich Times, “office supplies like giant sticky notes dried up, and the company no longer hands out ‘Uberversary’ balloons.”
Those who play the stocks are always looking for even the slightest advantage, some magical indicator that portends a company’s—and thus their stock price’s—future. That marker may just be coffee.
So instead of looking at bear vs. bull markets or listening to Jim Cramer bloviating loudly about “buy, buy [clown horn] sell, sell,” you may want to look at a company’s coffee portfolio over the last six months before investing. If you, for instance, see a company switching from Dunkin to Verve or installing a Linea Mini in the breakroom, their stock is on the rise and YOU NEED TO BUY BUY BUY [cash register ding]! But if that rank old Mr. Coffee with the brown-stained pot mysteriously reappears along with a 3lb canister of pre-ground Kirkland Signature, it might be time to abandon ship [toilet flush].
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
