Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Read our lips: Starbucks stole balm idea, gloss maker says

Reprints
Starbucks

A lip gloss maker appears to be down in the mouth with Starbucks. The New York Post reports that Los Angeles-based Balmuccino last week filed a lawsuit claiming the Seattle-based coffee giant stole its idea for coffee-scented lip balms.

A pitch meeting between Balmuccino and Mesh Gelman, then head of product development and a senior vice president at Starbucks, allegedly took place in New York in 2017, but a deal was never struck, according to the lawsuit. In 2019, Starbucks launched a line of lip glosses based on the S’mores Frappuccino.

The meeting apparently came about when Dr. Mehmet Oz, television presenter and politician, introduced his sister-in-law Samantha Lemole, a managing member of Balmuccino, to then Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

“Starbucks misappropriated trade secrets to create their competing product,” Eduardo Martorell, a legal representative of Balmuccino, told the New York Post.

This is the second time Balmuccino has filed a lawsuit against Starbucks. The initial suit filed in 2019 in Los Angeles was dismissed. The latest lawsuit, filed in Western Washington District Court, seeks $75,000 in damages.