A Carabello History of April Fools' Jokes

While it is not one of our company's core values, having fun and not taking ourselves too seriously is definitely at the heart of our company culture. One way that has seeped out over the past four years has been through some silly April Fools' Day posts we have made. Some were obvious, but one or two actually got a lot of people pretty good. In case you missed them—and just for the fun of remembering—let’s take a trip down memory lane together. 

It all started in March of 2023. Several of us were headed home from a coffee sourcing trip to Honduras. On the ride to the airport, someone said that we should do an April Fools' iced coffee bath joke on Instagram. We had never done such a thing, but I knew the perfect photographer: Rudy Harris of Harris Media here in Newport. I wrote to him immediately and he was in. We scored a legit ice bath (it was huge), and I started secretly stashing away coffee so I would have enough to brew. A few days later, I brewed 10 gallons of coffee and grabbed a 20 lb bag of ice thinking it was enough and quickly found out that the tub was so large that the coffee did not even get close to filling it up.

The next year as we were brainstorming ideas, our email marketer Sarah said, “You know how everyone is always confusing us with Caribou? We should mash up our logos and tell everyone that we merged with them to form Cariboullo Coffee.” 

Say no more; we knew we had struck gold! Our graphic designer Andrew got to work on it and we were off.

When I say that it may be the single most-engaged with social media post we have ever made, I do not think it is hyperbole. So many comments, shares and likes! But the best thing of all was that A LOT OF PEOPLE BELIEVED US! We literally were getting congratulations on “the merger” from everywhere. We were floored. I mean, Cariboullo? C’mon guys! 

In 2025, we landed on announcing that we were joining the cold foam trend—which is something many of our customers had been asking for. We thought, “Let’s announce this and start out with something that sounds legit—  Cherry Cold Foam—and then get progressively weirder.”

This year, we stuck with the idea of drink creation, but tried to bring it a little closer to home by having employees create the drinks (like we do all the time at Analog) based on hometown/heritage. We thought it would seem more believable with all real ingredients (no cartoon pickles), so yes, the fish is real, the matzo balls are homemade, and the other food items were all purchased in order to create these drinks!