[bg451]

Just a note on four barrel: One of their cofounders sexually harassed and assaulted their employees. The other cofounders were aware and complicit until a lawsuit finally hit. They promised to make four barrel employee owned but still have not followed up on that promise: https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-Barrel-...

We stopped ordering from four barrel because of these reasons and I'd recommend you'd consider not carrying their coffee either.

[seizethecheese]

Thanks for the note.

We have been told by Four Barrel that they are now employee owned and that the former owner is no longer involved.

My email is available at my account. If you know for certain that the above is not true, please reach out.

[noirbot]

I'd be open to believing that and I definitely don't want to mess them up too much, but at this point, their brand has done so much shady stuff over the years that it's really hard to trust them any more, especially when there's so many good options that don't have assaulters and potentially complicit owners in the mix.

[lampenrad]

>I definitely don't want to mess them up too much

You‘re actively trying to get other people to boycott them, which would eventually put them out of business. It‘s the first time I’ve heard about them and I don‘t care one way or the other but be honest. There‘s no „openness to believing“ the „potentially complicit“ here, your post is a complete contradiction.

[noirbot]

More of, I'd like to see more than them privately telling other companies that they've dealt with the issues. I'm open to someone showing me something that's more definitive than "We promise we did things", given that they've previously promised to do things and then not done them.

Their website doesn't seem to say anything about their ownership more than "locally owned", and at this point, they've burned a lot of their credibility when it comes to doing the right thing. If they've actually gotten rid of folks and they're a employee-owned company now, then I have no problems with buying from them and supporting folks.

I'm mostly just admitting that I haven't heard anything definitive either way in the last few months, and since the company doesn't seem to be making it easy to tell if they've changed things, it's likely that folks in the coffee community still think poorly of them.