Hundreds Of Café Bustelo Cans Wash Up On Florida Beach — Locals Rush Out To Collect The ‘Christmas Coffee’

Florida is a state that is no stranger when it comes to weirdness. Add in the millions of snowbirds who retire along with various Latin Americans and crazy Southerners, mix it four or five times a year with hurricanes, people will get a crazy concoction that is ready to explode at any minute. At times, said crazy concoction reaches a boiling point resulting in some of the most interesting circumstances to ever be reported. A man tried to cash in a personal check for $368 trillion to open an 80 million square feet underwater restaurant. A woman used a Pizza Hut app to call for help to escape a hostage crisis with her kids. Finally, a family was emotionally scarred when their dachshund Cody was devoured by an alligator right in front of them while they visited a wildlife refuge.

The aforementioned news is just a minute amount of said crazy concoction of Florida weirdness. All one has to do is read anything by Florida authors Tim Dorsey (Serge Storms Series) or Jeff Lindsay (Dexter Series) to realize that. However, the latest weird news is likened to the “El Mariel Boatlift” of caffeine. Hundreds of Café Bustelo cans wash ashore Indialantic.

According to local NBC news station NBC WPTV West Palm Beach, hundreds of yellow-sealed coffee cans washed ashore, dotting Indialantic beaches on Tuesday, December 8, 2015. Upon closer inspection of the coffee cans, they appeared to be the Cuban-style brand Café Bustelo, which is owned by Folgers and parent company Smuckers.

The above situation did turn into a nightmare situation not just for environmentalists, but for locals living along the beach. Florida Today reports that many Indialantic citizens came out to collect the coffee. Chris Sybo, a visitor from Pittsburgh who came down to attend his daughter’s graduation from the Florida Institute of Technology, called it “Christmas coffee.”

“It [Indialantic Beach] was just filled with it. I came out early this morning and saw it. I went back and told a worker and said you ought to see the beach. It’s like Christmas coffee.”

The Brevard County sheriff’s deputies and Indialantic police were called into the are after initial reports on the coffee cans washing ashore came in. Two U.S. Coast Guard investigators believe the coffee is possibly from missing load containers that fell overboard from a barge last weekend. Though their assumptions are more than likely true, they still want to make sure that only coffee washed ashore and nothing else.

Locals, on the other hand, are not waiting around for the authorities as droves of them came out with plastic bags to collect coffee cans, trying their best to clean up their beaches. One of the locals, Leon Stein, took pictures of the beach literally littered with thousands of coffee cans.

“I was out there about a half hour ago. There must be thousands cans or packages of compressed coffee.”

It should be noted the locals aren’t collecting the coffee for their own use or for second-hand sales. Despite the fact the coffee are all vacuumed-sealed, they are most-likely ruined by the ocean water making them unusable. Besides, they would probably fail at a resale given the fact anyone who really wanted coffee could get it for free off the beach.

The cleanup of the coffee cans will continue until Indialantic Beach is free. The length of time it will take to clean the mess is undetermined. With every coffee can that is collected, it seems that five more wash ashore. Also, a broadcast was aired to warn boaters and other marine vessels to be careful for coffee cans when traversing around the area.

[Image via Waterfront Brevard’s Instagram Account]