Planet Juice ™

Tales From A Thug Smoothie Company

Background | Initial | Physical Threats (Bill Kamaka email) | Legal Threats

Background

There's a smoothie company here in San Francisco (as well as franchises in other locations) that lists their smoothies as "non-dairy" even though they contain milk protein. This is bad news for people with serious dietary restrictions, so I put up a page about them and other companies to warn people who might have issue with milk.

Planet Juice noticed the page a couple years later and proceeded to threaten me through various venues to take the page down.

This is that story.

Initial Contact

2003/04/05: I went to Planet Juice and noticed that they had changed their menu to claim that their smoothies were dairy free. I happened to know that they're using a soy frozen yogurt that is not free of milk. In fact, if you read the ingredients on the mix it says "Casein (a milk protein)".

I let them know about their error, and the manager's response was "so?"

I should say "the man who claimed to be the manager" since everytime I talk to someone at Planet Juice they:

  1. Refuse to give me their full name (he claimed to be "Troy?")
  2. Tell me that they are the manager.
Planet Juice has many managers, as far as I can tell.

He was amazingly rude to me, so I put up a page to warn people about the Casein in the smoothies.

Physical Threats

2006/02/16: I receive email from a "bkamaka" which is physically threatening.

It turns out that this "bkamaka" is the owner of the Planet Juice domain, and I go into the store and ask if there is a "B. Kamaka" who works there and I'm told (by employee "Marco") that "Bill Kamaka" owns the company.

So, according to Planet Juice's personnel, and according to their domain registration, I have been threatened by someone who is high up in the company.

Highlights include:

I put his email online, and he stopped contacting me.

It's a pretty funny read, if you can get past the grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors.

Legal Threats

2006/02/21: I am contacted a few days later by a "Mike" who is at the Haight St. Planet Juice location. He repeatedly refuses to tell me his last name, but he claims:
  1. He is the president of Planet Juice, the corporation ("the buck stops here")
  2. There is no "Bill Kamaka" that works for Planet Juice, and they don't know who I received that email from, and I need to "take that shit down." He continues to claim this after I point out to him that this bkamaka owns his company's domain. That doesn't seem to phase him.
  3. They are going to sue me for all the lies and the "trademark infringement" on my page unless I take it down in 24 hours.
  4. He won't tell me what the "lies" and "trademark infringement" are on my page unless I come into their store.
  5. It's just coincidence that he's contacting me days after bkamaka stopped, as again, he doesn't know any bkamaka.
He seemed most upset by the posting of bkamaka's email, which is amusing since he repeatedly claimed to not know who bkamaka is.

I change my page from claiming that Kamaka is the owner of Planet Juice to instead say that they had told me that he was the owner. I don't have proof that he's the actual owner (yet). I can't see anything else they could legally fight me on.

2006/02/22: He calls me back and is happy that we've made progress. This is weird to me since I didn't really change anything and bkamaka's email is still on my site. I tell him that I'm going to be updating the page with everything that happens, and while he's unhappy, he doesn't seem to push the lawsuit issue other than to tell me:

"Planet Juice is a big corporation and can afford thousands
of dollars in legal fees, can you afford thousands of dollars
in legal fees? Is your opinion worth that much?"

Nice. It has nothing to do with the truth or legality of the matter, just a pure abuse of corporate power.

Go Planet Juice! You win my "Corporate Citizen Of The Year" award!

(And incidentally, Mike, I happen to love my opinion and would rather you didn't try to take it away, so yes, it is worth that much)

2008/02/24: UPDATE: Two years later I am happy to report that Planet Juice on Haight St has lost their lease and has closed! They still have other locations, hopefully their "business practices" will get those shut down as well.

Contact:

To contact or threaten me, please go to my contact page

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