As if he needed more caffeine.
Anthony Kiedis, the hyperkinetic Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lead singer, along with celebrity friend Shane Powers, a podcaster and former Survivor contestant, has turned the pair’s 20-year-plus standing weekly Thursday coffee meeting into a beverage business.
“Shane shouted at me down the sidewalk ‘Let’s do something!’” said Kiedis via a release. “I shouted back ‘how ‘bout coffee’? He said ‘done’. And so began the adventure of putting a high-quality spin on a can of coffee. Now it’s time to put on some aprons and serve the world some delicious coffee. Simple and fun.”
The pair officially launched JOLENE today with a 2-SKU line that includes a black Cold Brew and an Oat Milk Latte. Both are packaged in 8.4 oz. slim cans. The brand has trademarked the tagline “everything happens over coffee.”
Concert and event company Live Nation; John Terzian, the founder and CEO of restaurant and nightclub company the h.wood group; and celebrity spirit company Global Brand Equities are all investors in JOLENE.
“Live Nation had long been discussing partnership and brand-building opportunities with Global Brand Equities,” said Jackie Atlas, the brand’s general manager. “So when the dots were connected that GBE was building out the operation alongside the JOLENE Founders, one of which is also a longtime partner with Live Nation on the music side, it was a no-brainer to bring all the entities together.”
The coffee will debut over the summer in more than 40 Live Nation arenas – where it will be available for purchase as a beverage or as part of a mixed drink – as well as online, at h.wood venues, and with an eye toward convenience store, grab-and-go, and natural and conventional grocery channels.
Initial brand activations will lean heavily into the concert experience, with JOLENE being promoted at high-profile music festivals like Bottlerock later this month.
The brand was eight years in the making. Five years ago, the pair added Terzian as a partner. As early as 2022, there’s a photo of a can of JOLENE on Powers’ Instagram account, but the product wasn’t market-ready, the team says, until they brought on GBE. The brand development group has launched everything from actor Kevin Hart’s Grand Coramino tequila to wine brand Maison No.9 with singer Post Malone, and GBE founder and CEO James Morrisey was able to create the final formula for JOLENE.
The company sources its coffee from an all-female coffee collective in Peru, according to Atlas, who has worked with both Anheuser Busch and Reckitt in the past. JOLENE will donate 5% of its coffee purchase back to the farmers each year, Atlas said.