The biggest story last week—or at least the story that stuck with us, like a glob of phlegm lodged in the gullet—was the news that former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had started his own coffee brand, the eponymously named Rudy’s Coffee. It was a weird story, even amongst the pantheon of celebrity-associated coffee brands popping up.
Of all the many, and there were many, unanswered questions about Rudy’s Coffee, there was one that lingered: who roasts for Rudy? We snooped and came up with bupkis. We emailed and only got bounce backs. So on Friday, dejected but undeterred, we put a call out to all the internet sleuths out there to see if anyone had any leads on that most burning of question. And within an hour of posting in on the ‘Gram, we had what appeared to be our answer, thanks to the investigative and eagle-eyed lawyering of longtime Sprudge reader (and proud Vermonter) Liz Turner.
Poring over the Rudy’s Coffee website’s privacy policy, Turner found a physical mailing address: 521 Northeast 189th Street, Miami FL 33179, United States. That address is shared with another coffee entity, Burke Brands, the umbrella company for coffee outfits Don Pablo Coffee, Subtle Earth Coffee, and Pablo’s Pride. The brands are sold “globally to Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Amazon.”
The connection between Rudy’s Coffee and Burke Brands was further corroborated when the latter was subpoenaed to produce all documents relating to Rudy’s Coffee as part of debt hearings.
But who is behind Burke Brands, who roasts for Rudy? According to LinkedIn, that would be Darron “Don Pablo” Burke, who is the company’s owner. (Whether or not he is actually handling the trier, who can say.) We have emailed Burke Brands and Don Pablo Coffee for more information and have yet to hear back, but in the mean time, here is what is known about Burke, as gleaned from the information publicly available on his brands’ websites.
Per Don Pablo Coffee, Burke moved to South Florida in 1989, where he met Eliana, the woman who would become his wife.
While visiting Eliana’s family in Colombia, Darron fell in love with Latin culture and the country’s delicious coffee. The couple quickly recognized an opportunity and began to learn everything they could about coffee growing and roasting in Colombia and traveled the rest of Latin America to further their education and forge relationships with other coffee growers.
The name “Don Pablo” was given to Burke by Eliana’s grandmother, who had difficulty pronouncing the name Darron. It stuck.
Burke Brands has their own coffee farm in Colombia but also works with other producers across Latin America.
We grow our own coffee in Colombia, S.A. and purchase only the highest quality Arabica specialty coffee beans from all over the world. Our partnership with the largest private coffee milling and exporting company in Latin America allows us select the top 1% of Arabica coffee beans available.
Elsewhere on the site, they select the top 2% of Arabica coffee available. They also mention they have a Q-Grader on staff, but the person who holds this position is not publicly named. This means yes, Rudy’s Coffee has a Q anon.
Along with roasting, Don Pablo has a few multimedia interests, including Don Pablo Studios, which produces videos about the company and producers they work with as well as “Funny Videos by Don Pablo,” which are less serious. There is also The Coffee Fix, a sort of erstwhile Dangerous Grounds documentary series following Burke as he “travels the world to grow his coffee company, [where] he discovers budding small businesses in each destination to lend his experience, expertise and resources to in an effort to help them succeed.”
“The Coffee Fix” is an hour-long, self-contained, docu-leaning hybrid reality show that offers a unique glimpse inside the exotic and colorful world of coffee growing and roasting. It follows Don Pablo, often accompanied by his niece Jessenia and wife Eliana, on coffee-related ventures around the globe, showcasing the cultures and personalities surrounding the industry. However, the true focus of “The Coffee Fix” is entrepreneurship as Don Pablo, a small business entrepreneur himself and former teacher of the subject, offers his help to intriguing small businesses in each of the locales that he visits.
The whole thing is pretty Carmichaelvellian. Per the website, The Coffee Fix is still in production and the first episode takes place in Antigua, Guatemala, though the copyright on the website is listed as 2020, so that status may be a few years old.
So there you have it, Burke Brands and Darron “Don Pablo” Burke appear to be who roasts for Rudy. And not to get all “the signs were there all along,” but in that awful AI/photoshop of Giuliani holding a cup of coffee like no human has ever once held one, in the background there is a woman wearing a white Panama-style hat strikingly similar to the one Don Pablo wears pretty much all the time.
And to the last question you are surely mulling over, the answer is: Yes, he always wears it. In every photo, video, and logo, there isn’t one without it. Always.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
