Israeli Coffee Chain Meets Ice-Cold Boycott
Cofizz created the wrong kind of buzz when it used this map of Israel in a promotion. Facebook
The Israeli coffee chain Cofizz may have the “best coffee” and “best price” — at least according to its slogan. But its advertising studio just brewed something far less popular.
The company recently posted a map of Israel on Facebook to celebrate the opening of its tenth location. The image, however, uses the internationally agreed upon map of Israel, without including the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. That apparently left a bad taste in the mouths of some Israelis, who claim some or all of those occupied lands as part of the Jewish state.
A threatened customer boycott of the chain led Cofizz representatives to apologize, claiming an “unfortunate oversight.”
The map has since been removed and replaced with one that depicts Israel as encompassing the West Bank and Golan Heights. It also included the debatable statement: “We do not hold political views.” Hopefully, customers will see the next pot half-full.
Hadas Margulies is the new food intern at the Forward. Find her at HadasMargulies.com
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
