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Shane Whittle, and the Heady Aromas of Marley Coffee

John Bucher

| September 8, 2009

Shane Whittle, Marley Coffee | BCBusiness

Image by: marleycoffee.com

Shane Whittle joins Bob Marley's son to crack the Vancouver market with Marley Coffee.

Local entrepreneur Shane Whittle joins Bob Marley’s son to crack the Vancouver market with Marley Coffee.

The first thing you notice about Shane Whittle is his alertness. The 33-year-old looks you in the eye and exudes the kind of rude health that makes you wish you drank less, got to the gym more. He and I are sitting on the patio of Kits Coffee Co., discussing his recent foray into gourmet coffee. That’s not the stuff we’re drinking, mind you – although he calls the Kits brew “not bad.” Whittle is the CEO of Marley Coffee Inc., the four-month-old coffee company he founded with Rohan Marley, the seventh son of the legendary reggae singer Bob Marley.

Marley Coffee has 16 employees split between its offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles and Jamaica. While the coffee isn’t yet available in your local café (that’s coming soon), you can order it at marleycoffee.com or speak to someone at La Grotta Del Formaggio on Commercial Drive, the company’s local distributor.

Whittle was born in North Vancouver; Marley, 37, was born in Jamaica. The two became friends six years ago on a Los Angeles soccer pitch, and the money-making ideas soon followed. Whittle, a serial entrepreneur who developed businesses in document editing and medical testing, describes himself as “proactive, aggressive.” Marley, in Whittle’s telling, is just the opposite: “He’s very relaxed – and he likes his marijuana.”

So tranquil a business partner may not always be desirable, but it’s no secret that the company hopes to trade heavily on what Whittle calls Rohan’s “legacy,” his father's ’s name. Here’s what Whittle would want you to know about his coffee: it’s organic, sustainably grown and ethically farmed – much of it on the 21-hectare Marley family estate in Portland, Jamaica. “Pure food from the earth,” reads the label, “is physically and spiritually beneficial.”

Cant like that is familiar to the denizens of liberal, coffee-saturated cities like Vancouver – you find such sentiment on T-shirts and reusable shopping bags. In a market glutted with premium beans, goes the idea, if you can’t win on taste, win on metaphysics.

But Marley Coffee has more than a global icon and high-flown morals going for it. I just brewed a pot in our office’s battered Black & Decker drip machine. I have to say, it’s really good.

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Marley Coffee tastes

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2010-06-19 08:33.

Marley Coffee tastes incredible! Such a great job!

Out of all the coffees I

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2010-05-15 07:16.

Out of all the coffees I have tried, Marley Coffee is the best coffee I have tasted - One Love!

Marley Coffee's One Love is

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-05-14 21:28.

Marley Coffee's One Love is one of the very best coffees I've ever tasted! Not only is it ethically farmed, it's organic and oh sooo smooth. Love that in the morning... Check out this review: http://dailyshotofcoffee.com/one-love-by-marley-coffee-what-im-drinking/ The Drink: One Love From Marley Coffee Type: Whole Bean Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 More than 1300 years ago, coffee as we know it was born in the African country of Ethiopia. There, coffee is just a much a part of daily life and rituals as it’s part of the morning routine in America. The crown jewels of Ethiopian coffee is called Yirgacheffee. Maybe it’s fitting, that my journeys with the Marley Coffee company end with a coffee from where it all started. One Love is an Organic Ethiopian Coffee, a remarkable coffee and one of the top five coffees that I’ve had this year. Everything about this coffee was above average, starting with the aroma. I’ve had coffees with floral aromas, but I’ve never smelled one like this before. The aroma coming from a freshly poured cup almost smells like I’m in a park, walking by blooming flowers. It wasn’t overwhelming like I walked into a flower shop, just a hint of spring. To a lesser degree, there was the smell of freshly picked strawberries and blueberries, with a hint of chocolate underneath it all. The initial sip overwhelmed me with flavor. A warm and smooth feeling filled my mouth, it was bright and full of excitement for my taste buds. I had a hard time picking out what I was tasting at first. After a few sips, chocolate and nut flavors rose to the top. Underneath, I was picking up hints of cinnamon and mint. It had an organic taste – crisp and clean tasting. My tongue was left with a cherry dipped in chocolate taste. It was the perfect finish. The Bob Marley song “One Love” is about people coming together. This is a coffee that I wanted to share with other people, it would be perfect for when you have friends and family over for dinner. Of course, I wouldn’t complain about drinking this coffee everyday. By the end of my cup, I knew that One Love was my favorite from Marley Coffee. I gave it a rating of 4.5 out of 5, one of the highest ratings that a coffee has earned so far. If you can only get one, it’s the one I recommend, but if you can, try them all, it’s well worth it. Right now, you can buy One Love at the Marley Coffee site for $14.99 a bag. I really enjoyed all of the Marley Coffees, but I do have one real complaint. The packaging can be difficult to open without the bag tearing and coffee beans escaping. Other than that, I really think that Rohan Marley and his friend Shane Whittle did excellent work in continuing Bob Marley’s legacy and fulfilling his dream of returning to a life of farming. Other Marley Coffees Reviewed Jammin Java – A full city roast. Lively Up! – A 5 bean espresso blend. Mystic Morning – An organic wake up coffee. Simmer Down – An organic decaf coffee.

Your website is being used

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2010-05-13 15:05.

Your website is being used by a questionable character - suggest you remove the column see below: Vancouver promoter offers unfriendly advice to journalists By David Baines, Vancouver Sun May 13, 2010 Shane Whittle, 34, is not exactly the most pleasant stock promoter I have met during my 25 years covering Howe Street. When I called a few days ago he had a rather curt response: "Go f---yourself." I had called Whittle to find out what, if any, connection he had to Big Bear Mining Corp., a U.S. Bulletin Board deal that was assembled in Vancouver and is now ravaging investors in the United States. Last month, a financial motivational speaker and recent bankrupt, Steve Rix of Scottsdale, Ariz., obtained control of the company, and with the help of hired newsletter writers and bogus research analysts, began promoting it to high heaven. The stock roared from zero to a high of $1.75 last month. It is now trading at 91 cents, but trading volume has been massive, providing lots of opportunity for insiders and their friends to jettison stock before it collapses, as it most certainly will. Like hundreds of U.S. penny stock promotions, Big Bear's tracks lead back to Vancouver and Whittle in particular. When Big Bear filed its registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2006, the company listed its office address as 1728 Yew St. in Vancouver. That's the same apartment block that Whittle used as his personal address in one of his earlier bulletin board deals, Radium Ventures Inc. Big Bear's president was said to be Aaron Hall, but I don't think he was really running the show. Hall worked as a bouncer at the Stone Temple nightclub on Granville Street. It doesn't seem likely that Hall had the financial savvy or connections to assemble professionals -- such as lawyer Bernard Pinsky at Clark Wilson in Vancouver and accountants LBB & Associates in Houston, Tex. -- to help with Big Bear's registration process. Whittle, on the other hand, has been involved in two other bulletin board deals, Black Hawk Exploration Inc. and Global Electronic Recovery Corp., which used the same lawyers and accountants. According to Big Bear's registration statement, Hall staked a mineral claim near Prince George and sold it to the company for $1,000. To raise money for exploration, the company sold a bunch of shares to 38 seed shareholders at prices ranging from one to 10 cents. In my experience, these seed shareholders often act as nominees for insiders. They don't really buy the shares, they just keep them warm until they are registered for resale. Then whoever is orchestrating the deal gathers them up, creating a tightly held, publicly traded company that can be easily manipulated. When Big Bear filed its registration statement, such shell companies were selling for $500,000 on the street. To test my thesis, I called up one of Big Bear's seed shareholders, Gary Mang of North Vancouver. He readily acknowledged that he didn't pay for his shares or even take receipt of them. He said he simply permitted the use of his name as a "favour" to a friend. Who was his friend? He said his name was Jason, but wouldn't give his last name because he didn't want to get him in trouble. But he allowed that the person who was behind the deal was Shane Whittle. (I have since determined that Mang's friend is Jason Freeman. He and Whittle served as officers and directors in an earlier bulletin board deal called Global Industries Corp.) So who is Shane Whittle? Well, a bit of everything, judging by securities filings. In one filing, Whittle says he served as "the manager of the Cactus Club restaurant chain" from 1997 to 1999, but that is a bit of an exaggeration. A Cactus Club spokesman told me he served as manager of the North Vancouver location only. From June 1994 to September 2004, he served as an event-planning consultant with a private company called Velvet Groove Entertainment. I have no information on this business. From 2000 to 2005, he was president of an essay and report-editing service that he used as a business premise for Radium Ventures. In June 2005, after generating only $2,825 in revenues, the company merged with Interactive Television Networks Inc., which provided movies on demand via the Internet. Control passed to a group of California promoters, who pumped the stock to $4.65 US, but the company was an abysmal failure and quickly went out of business. Public shareholders were wiped out. In 2002, Whittle formed Global Industries, a private company involved in health diagnostic testing (it focused on HIV in-home testing). In early 2008, after distributing seed shares to a tight group of friends and family members, Whittle and Freeman took the company public on the bulletin board. As of Dec. 31, 2009, the company had generated zero revenues and had only $592 in total assets. In August 2007, Whittle became a director of Global Electronic Recovery, which planned to recycle electronic waste. The company never got off the ground, however. In February 2008, Whittle transformed the company into Marley Coffee Inc., a Jamaican coffee import business featuring one of legendary reggae singer Bob Marley's sons, Rohan Marley, as chairman. As of Jan. 31, 2009, the company hadn't generated a cent in revenue. Last month, Whittle resigned as president. In a recent filing, Whittle reported that since January 2006, he has served as "Marketing Manager and Strategic Global Business Director of Integrity Marketing Group, which is in the global travel industry." Integrity describes itself as "a recognized industry leader in call centre solutions." When I called the company's contact number, I ended up with a voice message for Quest Vacations, which uses high-pressure tactics to sell vacation packages. I was unable to determine the relationship between the two firms, if any. Whittle also describes himself as CEO of White Lion Capital Inc., "a private B.C. venture capital company focused on real estate and financing public mergers and acquisitions and setting up strategic alliances between companies." I have no information on this company. Whittle's reported academic credentials are confusing, to say the least. In one filing, he purports to have earned an International Business Degree from Capilano College in 1999. In another, he says he obtained a Business Administration Degree from Capilano College in 2001. And in yet another, he claims to have obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration Diploma from Capilano College in 1998. (There is no such thing as a "bachelor diploma.") I tried calling Capilano University (as it is now called) to determine what credentials he has or hasn't, but was told that information is considered confidential under privacy legislation. How convenient for people who want to fudge their academic credentials. NEXT: Melissa Davis, a brilliant muckraking journalist from the United States, tries to determine what role, if any, Whittle had in the genesis of Big Bear. Whittle gives her the same advice he gave me: "Take your phone call and shove it up your ass." dbaines@vancouversun.com © Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/Vancouver+promoter+offers+unfriendly+advice+journalists/3021989/story.html#ixzz0nqyM96vM