Aren’t the flavored oils artificial? How do they make rum flavored blueberry orange pumpkin shit?
Yes, those are. However, for example - I enjoy a blend of Ethiopian Harrar prettymuch as a staple, which has chocolate notes just in the bean itself. They're subtle little flavors that you're best able to notice if you prepare the stuff as straight espresso. These are naturally-occurring flavors which will vary from bean to bean and from roasting process to roasting process; I also enjoy Yirgacheffe, which has a totally different flavor profile.
Most people who want flavored coffee buy specific creamers. Selling flavored coffee was probably a huge misstep.
Most people who buy flavored coffee overlap with people who buy creamers, as anyone serious about their coffee buys neither. Jer was obviously intending to target casual consumers... but failed to recognize that casual consumers cannot tell one coffee from another. Their main focus is going to be price-point. Their second focus will be finding a coffee whose flavor they like well-enough and which is reliable. And their third focus will be brand identity. Jer has fucked all three of these things.
His price-points are absolutely fucking retarded, charging outrageous premiums that make no sense even for actually-good coffee: prices that high are only explained by marketing and brand recognition. K-cup coffee is outrageously expensive because cattle love their convenience, but he charges whole and ground bags at above normal k-cup rates: no-one's going to buy that shit even outside of a recession. For example, I buy my coffee of choice at about $12/pound, whole-bean. It's a lot pricier than store-bought, but it fits my budget just-fine and the quality jump is tremendous. I'd say it's common for coffee hipsters to spend around $20/pound, which is still a ridiculous overcharge. Jer's coffee, which is old shit dunked into flavored oils, is $20/ 12 oz. His core audience, retarded boomer pensioners who only have chain restaurants and major brands in a 400 mile radius of their location, are not going to spend that much on fruit-flavored coffee.
Secondly, his actual flavor profile is going to be completely unpredictable. This shit is sitting in warehouses for an eternity - I wouldn't be surprised if excess stock from Millcreek was then sold to the white-labeler, so even before sitting on shelves as CBC it's been sitting around a while. It's going to make for extremely inconsistent flavor profiles. My reserve coffee is Eight O'Clock's Original, because it has a smoky profile that hides the fact that the beans have been sitting in warehouses and shelves for weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if the flavored coffees are taken from similar roast profiles but completely different beans, batch-to-batch, because who the fuck cares? Jer certainly doesn't know fucking anything about coffee, since it takes longer to prepare than a redbull.
And lastly, by saying it's "not a political brand," Jer completely fucked the third one. He has no cult of personality, because he has no personality. The only thing he's known for is being that one annoying right-wing guy on youtube that gets recommended constantly until you expressly say 'do not recommend this channel.' Politics was the only fucking thing he had to sell his coffee on, and as BRC has demonstrated politics is a great way to take a mediocre product and turn it into a product sold at an upcharge to a dumbshit audience who thinks that consumption substitutes for political activism. He could have made bank selling a CBC branded "pwn the libs portafilter" to retards who'll use an espresso machine twice before they sell it on facebook marketplace and return to their keurig k-cup machine, but in classic narcissist fashion he decided to compete with the established coffee companies... on the 'merits,' thinking his stuff would win out over them.... because because?
(In mild defense of BRC, if I'm traveling and want a gas-station cold-brew coffee, their shit isn't near as drenched in sugar as alternatives, especially Starbucks.)