A good friend of mine owns a small green-business in Vermont. Born and raised there, he's as much a true-blue-State-American-dude as they come. He passed along a story about another Vermont business being unduly attacked by a big bad West Coast energy drink corporation. The story just reeks, no matter your political orientation or general choice of beverage.
Energy drinks occupy a market that didn’t really exist even just a decade ago. The visionaries who now profit off those over-caffeinated high-fructose-corn-syrup elixirs probably would have sold Doc Martens-themed cologne or Donna Karan-designed flannel shirts if you flipped them back a generation in a time machine. Or to use an older cliché, energy drinks are the pet rocks of this decade. All style, zero substance.
Admittedly I’ve fallen prey to the advertised advantages of these products, drinking a few Red Bulls for a long drive for example. But in the past, I’ve shown about as much interest in energy drinks as I have in the upcoming Twilight movie and soundtrack, or in debating whether Arena Football is poised to have its breakthrough season anytime within the next decade.
Until now, that is. Now energy drinks – or rather one particular energy drink company – have me ready to go to the ramparts.
Monster Energy Drinks describes itself as “A Lifestyle in a Can.” Yeah, well, the same can be said of SPAM or Sterno or Fancy Feast cat food. Who gives a rip, right? That is, until Monster went after a tiny, utterly delicious micro-brewery in Vermont named Rock Art Brewery. When I lived in Vermont a handful of years back, growlers (those adorable jug-band-ready half-gallon containers) of Rock Art’s Ridge Runner were my favorite beer. Rock Art exemplifies my idea of a cool American small business – people who live what they love and work damn hard at making it the best they can.
Article comments
1 - Fran
Hey E. Very good article. And you got my dander up (as some folks call it).
Stuff like this really makes me sick.
I will tell you right now. I WILL NEVER BUY A MONSTER CAN OF ANY DRINKS, EVER. After this crap, they don't deserve my business.
Anyone that has their legal beagles go after a small company like this on such a STUPID pretext deserves to be taken down a peg or two.
*angry*
I have seen too many companies do this to see it happen again. I will be seeing what I can do to pass the word through Twitter, Digg, etc.