Wasn't Starbucks' Fault: Real Brand Behind GoT Coffee Fail Revealed
Any big project has its share of screw-ups. Some of those are just more noticeable than the others. But there is no better way to make your blunder noticeable than to put it on screen.
And so when a modern-day coffee cup somehow ended up in front of Emilia Clarke playing Daenerys Targaryen in Season 8 of HBO's Game of Thrones, people have noticed. The image went viral instantly. The fact that by Season 8 the "showrunners just don't care anymore" sentiment was common in Game of Thrones' fandom did not help. What could have been a small, funny gaffe in a time less plagued by controversial plot turns, became a supporting evidence for more profound flaws.
But what brand of coffee exactly was served to the Mother of Dragons? There were no discernible markings on the cup, but it bore enough resemblance to a Starbucks to-go cup that headlines just said it was from Starbucks. HBO released a statement at the time saying that Starbucks wasn't behind the cup, and that it was a craft services cup, but the headlines persisted. Digitally removing the cup from the episode was not nearly enough to make people forget the story and eventually even creators of House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones' prequel and successor, ended up joking about hunting for Starbucks' cups on set.
HBO's fail ended up as a blessing for Starbucks, giving them estimated $2 billion worth of free PR, according to THR.
But amazingly, the cup in question indeed never was from Starbucks, and HBO's statement was correct all along. In actuality it belonged to Established Coffee, a local Belfast coffeehouse, which co-owner, Mark Ashbridge, recently decided to talk out about this for the first time to AdWeek.
For a while, the owners of Established Coffee themselves didn't really think it was their cup – after all, plenty of time had passed between filming and airing of the episode, and they did not exactly mark the days when someone from the cast or the crew bought coffee from them. Not until Season 8 Blu-ray commentary, released in December 2019, where Emilia Clarke herself cleared things up when discussing the coffee incident with the showrunners, the cup's origin became clear.
"We should try to put this out there," Mark Ashbridge said. "This would be really good PR for us, and we didn't get any of the rub when it happened."
So far, though, they didn't, and Starbucks may be still reaping its unearned rewards.