| Honest Tea Sells an Honest Chunk of Itself to Coke |
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| Written by Erika Fredrickson | |
| Thursday, 07 February 2008 | |
 When an organic beverage company called Honest Tea, Inc. sells 40% of itself to the colossal corporation that is Coca Cola, it's hard not to experience an aftertaste of irony. That's not to say that Coca Cola is the most evil corporation ever to materialize (or is it?) but certainly “honesty” isn't the first synonym that comes to mind.
The recent acquisition by Coca Cola also comes with an option to buy the whole Honest Tea company after a three year period. In its press release, Honest Tea says they look forward to the distribution benefits that will come with jumping on the Coca Cola train, and that it understands the buyer skepticism that comes with this decision.
What's interesting though is that when Seth Goldman first co-founded the tea company with his business school professor, Barry Nalebuff, the whole idea was conceived from a discussion about the inadequacy of companies like Coca Cola to provide the beverage product they both craved.
Sort of makes it even more ironic, doesn't it?
Still, this kind of merger between organic companies and conventional giants has become so commonplace it's hard to see it anymore as a strange turn of events. The argument made by Honest Tea -- which is one most large organic companies make -- is that the beauty of getting big is that organic products will finally be mass distributed and mainstream -- (also there's that little detail about how they'll be making more money, but...) True enough, but I think this sort of thing also continues to illustrate how hollowed out the definition of organic has become. Or perhaps more specifically, how organic movements never officially defined what “organic” means beyond basic rules of production.
If organic production on a mass scale contributes to environmental depredation and overconsumption, how “good” is it? If it's run by a company that has had questionable ethics (apartheid, anyone?), then the “honest” in Honest Tea could get a little murky.
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