The Coffee Mafia

The Coffee Mafia is the general term used for any of the criminal organizations within Boston that specialize in the brewing, transporting, and distributing of coffee within city limits. These groups, which formed in the aftermath of the ban of coffee within city limits by the Boston Congress, run the caffeine speakeasies scattered across the city and frequently butt heads in order to control the coffee circulation.
== Organization ==
Control of the coffee in Boston is splintered among various gang factions, each working in different parts of the city and skirmishing at territory borders. The fractured nature of the city allows for the existence of many smaller organizations, such as the Latte Boys and the Mocha Joes, but the largest and most well known organizations are the Arosso and Bertivi families, and the Cuppa Burnt gang.
=== The Arosso Family ===
The Arosso family controls the Downtown Crossing area and most of South End, operating between Milk Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Working out of their headquarters in Filene’s Basement, named after their founder Filene Cappucino’s long red hair, they specialize in a beautiful reddish coffee that has a color similar to clay and carries a mellower taste. Their symbol is a red amaryllis flower, often drawn as art onto the tops of their drinks.
=== The Bertivi Family ===
The Bertivis work out of the Seaport and City Point, levying a heavy coffee tax on any of the caffeine-laden beans that come in or out of the city by boat. They have a special operation underneath the Distillery Gallery, where Bertivi grunts methodically craft an extremely concentrated product using drip methods that is both sold in a slightly diluted form or used by the family as a type of toxin. The Bertivi symbol is a handful of finely ground coffee beans.
=== Cuppa Burnt Gang ===
The Cuppa Burnt gang is a notorious biker gang crossed with a hit and run coffee delivery service that operates all over the city. While they don’t have a true home turf, the Cuppa Burnts are often seen operating inside Roxbury or Upham’s Crossing. Originally a smaller group, the bikers have grown into prevalence in more recent years through a combination of the advantages of coffeehouses on wheels and their development of guns that can hold their superheated espresso shots. Their logo is a skull with coffee flowers for eyes.
= History of the Mafia =
=== The Enactment of Coffee Law & Black Coffee Friday ===
In the rebuilding of Boston after the The Great Coffee War, one of the first undertakings was the formation of the Boston Congress, whose second act was the immediate banning of both possession and sale of coffee of all kinds within the city limits. This act effectively forced all Baristas out of Boston, but was never enforced, leaving a power vacuum in the city’s beverage economy. In a mad rush to gain control of the beans, riots, lawless, uncontrolled brewing, and an absurd discount on cappuccinos broke out across the city for about 12 minutes, in an event known as Black Coffee Friday. However, thanks to the lack of Baristas remaining in the city, as well as Boston’s own distorted nature, meant that the issue faded rather quickly into the background as Bostonians moved forward with their everyday lives.
=== The Black Coffee Market ===
Once the tension within the coffee scene in Boston had finished boiling over, many still found that they could not do without their morning cup. Some were hesitant to switch over to the strange new tea discovered by Ulysses D. Donut during the Great Coffee Wars; others found its flavor to be inferior to coffee. Thanks to a lack of effective government in Boston, many never knew that coffee had become illegal at all. To serve the needs of the coffee drinking community, a thriving black market of coffee built itself up in South Boston. This served as the first center hub for the distribution and drinking of the illegal beverage as the city returned to the closest to normal it could manage. Originally called First Cup thanks to its placement near First Street, this location lost favor as the market for coffee moved westward towards the center of the city, becoming known as the Bargain Bin for the poor but cheap beans available to purchase.
As the need for coffee in the city grew, the location for buying coffee became more central, with a new underground trading hub forming on the corner of East Berkley and Tremont Streets, informally renamed Sugar and Cream Streets by the regulars that would come to trade coffee there. Around this location sprang up dozens of independently-run speakeasies selling fresh coffee, a trend that slowly worked its way through the rest of the city.
=== Consolidation of Power ===
While this coffee crime was widespread and rampant throughout Boston, it was uncontrolled and unorganized, with many coffee dealers fending for themselves against their neighbors. This situation created ripe business opportunities for forward thinking individuals who could rope groups of these speakeasies into alliances. None recognized this moreso than Benvenuto Cappucino, a hardworking speakeasy owner. Seeing the advantage of controlling multiple speakeasies and having working with other brewers, Benvenuto methodically bargained, bribed, and eventually bullied his way into creating not only an organization, but a whole coffee empire. Known as the first Coffee Godfather, Benvenuto strove to both make the illegal drink accessible and affordable to those who wanted it and also keeping the competing speakeasies in line, all while taking a massive profit off the top. At the height of his power, Benvenuto controlled most of the coffee distribution across Boston in one form or another, and was regarded as being only slightly less powerful than Ulysses D. Donut and the Bloston Congress.
=== The Fractured Empire ===
This power, however, was not to last. The immense size of the Benvenuto empire began to show stress cracks as smaller competing factions emerged within the organization. In addition, Benvenuto’s age began to catch up with him, the coffee fumes he spent so much time working with taking a toll on his health and making it harder to run the daily affairs of his massive business. In an attempt to hold things together, Benvenuto relegated more and more control over to his two daughters, Filene and Tessa Cappucino. What the father did not account for however, was the animosity between the two, which only worsened the strain; Filene disapproved of her sister’s choice of wife, Jean Betrivi, who came from a lower class of the family, while Tessa was jealous of Filene and her place as Benvenuto’s favorite.
As both the empire’s strain and the elder Cappucino’s health began to worsen, Benvenuto religious attitude towards coffee became stronger, and he became obsessed with the Baristas and an ancient legend regarding the city of El Demitasse, a mystical land whose coffee springs granted immortality to the drinkers and had long ago been lost to time. Eventually, against his better judgement and his daughter’s wishes, he set out on an expedition to rediscover and claim El Demitasse for his own purposes. Leaving his daughters in charge of the family, he set out with a small group of devout followers, and was never heard from again.
With the elder Cappucino gone, the organization he had worked so hard to put together quickly splintered, with the two sisters breaking out into open gang warfare and many lower-ranked family members breaking away in the chaos. Selling coffee in Boston became a wild and dangerous operation once more, but Benvenuto’s work still left its mark, setting
the framework for the myriad of smaller groups that control the coffee to the present day.