The best cup of coffee I had all week, maybe all month, was sipped this past Thursday downstairs at the stunning new Hard Rock Hotel on West 48th St. It’s called Stevie’s Jungle Java Roast, from a private farm in Nicaragua.
And there in the lower floor of the new hotel, which has a beautiful theater — was wide grinned, well-scarved Little Steven and his beautiful dancer wife Maureen presiding over the launch of Wicked Cool Wellness, which includes a whole line of very tasty, organic products like many different iterations of coffee, brownies and blondies, lollipops, teas, and so on.
They also make aromatic soy candles, which are not for eating (but they smell like they could be.)
Ten percent of the profits from van Zandt’s apothecary go to TeachRock, a 501 c3 “that has developed a curriculum, educational materials, and resources based around popular music, a subject that provides immediate common ground with student interest and passion. Interdisciplinary in nature TeachRock uses the history of popular music to create engaging, multicultural lesson plans for history, social studies, language arts, music, and science classrooms, for learning at all levels, and are available to educators, students, and individuals at NO COST.”
Little Steven is not new to philanthropy. He’s used his E Street fame only for good over the years, whether it was stopping musicians to playing in South Africa before apartheid ended to any number of good causes.
But let’s get back to products: they are delicious. Stevie partnered with his pal David Roth who runs Wakaya, which grows some of the finest quality, single source, organic wellness ingredients in the world from their small farms in Fiji and Nicaragua. All their products  are 100% grown and harvested with local loving hands, with no machinery or pesticides ever used. Their crops are famous around the world for their flavor and potency. Plus, they go to these places so we don’t have to!
(Between the brownie and the medium roast, I was happy and awake for about 24 hours!)
And the whole thing is summed up in their clever video aka commercial, see below.
