It’s going to be a rough weekend for Tully’s Coffee, the Seattle-based coffee chain that was once an early Starbucks competitor: it has to shut down its shops temporarily due to a lack of, well, coffee.
The reason? Michael Avenatti, lawyer for adult film star Stormy Daniels and Tully’s part-owner, says they seem to have fallen behind on keeping up with store supplies.
Daniels is making headlines again after saying she had an “intimate relationship”
with President Donald Trump in 2006 and was paid $130,000 to keep
quiet. (Trump denies this claim.) Naturally, her lawyer Avenatti has
been busy, filing a lawsuit to release her from her alleged agreement,
and fielding press about the pending legal battle.
In
the meantime, though, his other job with Tully’s seems to have fallen
by the wayside. Avenatti bought Tully’s out of bankruptcy back in 2013 with former Grey’s Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey, although there are conflicted reports about his level of current involvement. (Dempsey has left the company.) In any case, the coffee chain is currently in distress.
“At
this time we have very minimal coffee left in stores,” a project
director wrote in an internal email to employees obtained by the Seattle Times.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know how long this will take, so we need to
prepare the stores to be closed for a couple days.” While a spokeswoman
told the Seattle Times that Avenatti only serves as the
company’s General Counsel, another employee insisted to the paper that
Avenatti still personally handles payments — including those to vendors,
which would explain the coffee bean crisis.