Locking horns
B’klyn ‘Unicorn creator’ rips S’bucks
A Brooklyn cafe owner says that when she created a colorful “Unicorn Latte,” she thought it would be a nice way to peddle the new so-called superfood bluegreen algae.
But she alleges Starbucks not only ripped off her idea. but added sugary syrups and artificial dyes, prompting Katy Perry to famously spit it out, giving the Brooklyn concoction a bad name.
“I felt a lot of excitement and pride that something good for you could be as fun and colorful as junk food,” said Madeline Murphy, co-owner of Williamsburg’s The End cafe. “No one ever wanted it to be synonymous with spitting something out.”
Murphy is suing Starbucks for $10 million over trademark infringement.
Unlike Starbucks’ version — the Unicorn Frappuccino, which sold out during its limited release last month — Murphy said there’s nothing artificial about her brew.
She said the magic ingredient in her own $9 drink is an allergy- and cholesterolbusting powder made from blue-green algae.
She’d been toying with the idea of mixing the algae in a “tasty drink” for three years. Last December Murphy, 32, cobbled together a recipe that blends lemon juice with vanilla beans and Medjool dates.
The psychedelic hue is in part thanks to the algae, which is harvested from a lake in Oregon.
“The ingredients are so potent and powerful that I started to describe them as magical,” Murphy said about her decision to name the concoction after the mystical unicorn.
The New York Times called the drink a “healing Unicorn Latte.”
“The End’s Unicorn Latte became viral and was all over the Internet,” said Murphy’s lawyer, Josh Schiller, with the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP.
A Starbucks spokesman insists it was just putting its own twist on a trend and called Murphy’s claims “without merit.”