It’s been a rough week for Emma Chamberlain. First, the YouTube star and Chamberlain Coffee namesake was unceremoniously bounced from the first round of the Sprudge 2025 Ultimate Coffee Bracket. As a two-seed nonetheless, and it frankly wasn’t even close. Adding insult to injury is the news that Chamberlain faced significant trouble securing funding for Chamberlain Coffee with the brand posting a loss in 2024.
The hidden turmoil at Chamberlain Coffee HQ, which Chamberlain herself alluded to a little over a year ago in a three-hour podcast interview, was made public by Natalie Jarvis on her Like and Subscribe Substack, “a newsletter from Ankler Media about the big business of creators.” In it, Jarvis states to have gotten a hold of the brand’s investor materials, including a pitch deck, giving a more detailed look at the health of the coffee company in over 10,000 retailers and with a newly opened Los Angeles cafe of their own. And it paints a less rosy picture.
Speaking with potential investors, Jarvis states that one claimed he was contacted “by multiple people pitching a deal, which he describes as making the effort seem desperate.” (It should be noted that the company raised another $4.6 million in funding in 2024, bringing the total near the $20 million mark, so how desperate it is, YMMV.)
According to the report, Chamberlain Coffee operated at a loss in 2024, this despite the brand clearing nearly $22 million in revenue—just short of their forecast for the year—which was up 14% from the $19 million in sales from 2023. Per Jarvis, the brand attribute the loss to “growing pains,” like “issues with its co-packer that led to stock shortages,” as well as shakeups at the executive level.
Along with Gustav Langberg Hossy, the brand’s former COO, Chamberlain has taken control of the company as co-CEO after the exit of original CEO Christopher Gallant, who left to take the same position with ZICO Rising, a coconut water brand.
Now, they are re-focusing the brand on “profitability over growth.” Which for Chamberlain Coffee means scaling back its retail presence, streamlining product inventory, and focusing on more brick-and-mortar cafes; “we have four more cafe locations in the works, with a large publicly traded company as our financial partner,” states a Chamberlain Coffee representative.
With these changes, the brand forecasts a 53% revenue growth in 2025, to $33 million, which will put the company will be back in the black.
So maybe 2025 is going to be the rebound year for Chamberlain Coffee. But it’s not exactly off to a great start—the monumental Bracketsprology™ loss to Gio Fillari and Coffee Feed has to really take the wind out of their sails. That one is going to be tough to recover from.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
