kelly's coffee & fudge (also: gloria jean's coffees)

i should start a thread about kelly's coffee & fudge (on the first level of every mall ever).

i'm only starting this because of the connecticut muffin thread. if you've never heard of any of these places, talk about your favorite inconsequential small/mid-size coffee chain.

http://www.kellyscoffee.com/
http://www.gloriajeans.com/

Gloria Jeans are a multinational, a front for an evangelical cult, and were recently forced to remove, from all stores, donation boxes for their brainwashing program for pregnant teens and lesbians.

i drink their flavoured plunger coffee tho

sic, i did not know that! unsurprising in a weird way.

^cosign. i had no idea.

actually they may have been forced to close the program altogether, after a week of broadsheet stories about them denying girls in care medical attention or contact with their parents

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/20892/mercy-ministries

http://seantheblogonaut.com/2009/12/mercy-ministries-engaged-in-misleading-conduct-directors-forced-to-pay-118154/

http://www.crikey.com.au/2007/11/14/borders-passes-the-hat-for-anti-gay-pro-life-charity/

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/they-sought-help-but-got-exorcism-and-the-bible/2008/03/16/1205602195048.html?page=fullpage

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/28/2726973.htm

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/praise-be-hillsong-sets-its-sights-on-a-congregation-in-new-york-20100326-r31u.html

http://www.mercysurvivors.com/

And then this just happened last week:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/world/3596457/Gloria-Jean-faces-exposure

In contrast, the only thing in the news about Kelly's Coffee and Fudge is how happy Azusa is to have recently got one.

Do Gloria Jean's stores exist outside malls?

xpost -- Although it did make one guy who probably goes to Ren Faires a little mad, though more as a symbol than anything else.

(Never heard of Kelly's.)

From December 1998:

Before Shlomi Michaels took over the 14-year-old Kelly’s Coffee & Fudge Factory in 1997, he read the tea leaves on the gourmet coffee market.

"I recognized that the Starbuck’s of the country have moved the yuppies of America to the gourmet coffee market," Michaels told E.S.P. "I also recognized that the yuppies of 10 years ago are family people today. Evaluating the market, I came to a conclusion that we must create a family-oriented gourmet coffee outlet that will service the complete family, run by a family, that will have ‘no down time’ in sales during the day. Since coffee is dominantly a morning drink, I needed to create a menu that will stimulate the customer no matter what time of the day it is. I also needed to cover the hot months of the year when traditionally coffee consumption is lower."

Recognizing his own limitations, Michaels said, he fortified his operation with two professionals in the industry: Paul Wilmoth, who has close to 40 years in the industry, and Duane Peck, who has more than 20 years in the coffee and food industry.

Do Gloria Jean's stores exist outside malls?

Yes, for eg. they have a street-front on the same block as my work (next to another coffee shop), and a corner store on the street behind my work.

Kelly's took over the coffee counter of my local restaurant. Kinda disappointed since they were originally serving LA Mill's coffee.

When I worked in a bookshop ten years ago, and there was a GJs built into the shop, the manager started dating one of the girls who worked there, then recruited her to Hillsong. (Then got engaged to her and made her quit working.) By 2005ish, apparently they only employed kids who were already Hillsong members.

Hey, there is some dirty laundry after all! Turns out Shlomi Michaels is apparently also this guy.

I've never been able to bring myself to drink GJ's mainly cos of the Hillsong connection but also because ew, why would I drink that crap :(

Ah, that explains it:

Gerlick became a part of Kelly's Coffee and Fudge in May 2001, when she and her partner Kenneth Goodman acquired the brand after it fell into bankruptcy.

Which I suppose explains why Shlomi was off doing this:

The intense stranger introduced himself as Shlomi Michaels. He was a former commando with Israel's elite internal counterterrorism force, the Yamam; he had since become one of the middlemen who work the seams between the worlds of security, intelligence, and international business, along with a few more colorful sidelines including a private investigations/security business in Beverly Hills. Even as ex-Israeli commandos turned security experts go, Bruner thought, this one seemed unusually well connected—his business partner was former Mossad head Danny Yatom. Before arriving in Washington, Michaels, a dual Israel-US citizen, ran a string of businesses in Beverly Hills: a coffee/chocolate shop franchise, a martial arts training outfit, real estate investments, and a high-tech security business aimed at "high worth" Hollywood clients. After 9/11 he left Los Angeles, alighting first in New York (where he taught counterterrorism for a semester at Columbia University) and then in DC, where he would soon launch a lucrative venture to cash in on the Iraq War and its aftermath.

But on this day, Michaels had a different proposition for the former CIA officer—one, he suggested, that could make the assembled men a handsome commission and even help President George W. Bush get reelected. He had a well-placed Iraqi source—a former officer in an Iraqi military psychological operations unit, he said—who had gathered hundreds of pages of contracts, maps, and photographs documenting meetings between Iraqi and Ukrainian officials. The information, Michaels said, would prove that Iraq had pursued a covert chemical weapons program. Michaels wanted Bruner to set up a meeting for him and the Iraqi source with the CIA. To turn over the whole dossier, he wanted $1 million.

morelike gloria jean's fuckin crepes amirite

sadly this is making me crave a tim tam crush for the first time in six years

http://www.smh.com.au/business/gloria-jeans-owner-is-insolvent-court-told-20100816-126wz.html

In December, Mr Irvine and fellow Mercy Ministry directors admitted engaging in false, misleading and deceptive conduct following an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigation into the practices of the Hillsong-connected organisation.

Hillsong penance??

hoooly shit i didn't know any of this!!