FoamAroma · Draft Portal
DRAFT · For Review
Press mentions, televised appearances, podcasts, and recognition. Populated from Craig's reviewed content package (his edits, May 4). Each entry links out where possible, because third-party confirmation is half the SEO value.
Craig Bailey was selected for Shark Tank in 2014 with FoamAroma. After final-stage consideration, Craig declined the televised pitch, electing instead to continue building the company independently rather than trade equity for exposure.
FoamAroma was featured on Dragons' Den UK in 2016, introducing the product to a global audience and validating the sensory case for premium coffee lids on international television.
Craig returned to the Philadelphia open call on March 17, 2026 to submit FoamAroma, this time featuring the original lid (now offered in custom colors and with brand embossing) alongside a new biodegradable material additive as the focus for investment. As of early May, FoamAroma had not been selected from the first cut.
This one is hard to top. Federal Reserve Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin delivered a speech titled "Reflections on Reputation and its Consequences" at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's 2013 banking outlook discussion. To illustrate what real innovation looks like, she pointed to the buzz at a San Francisco technology awards ceremony, where the winners included companies like GitHub, Snapchat, SoundCloud, MakerBot, and Techmeme. The product that caught her attention was not an app. It was FoamAroma.
That buzz was around a pedestrian item, a new and improved coffee cup lid. This lid, called FoamAroma, reportedly provides exactly the right set of openings to maximize aroma and recyclability, while minimizing the effects of coffee spurting out too fast. The point here is that the innovator noticed something simple that others had not: many coffee shop employees don't drink their coffee from cups with plastic lids like their customers do, so there was a market need that had not been recognized and then addressed. Sarah Bloom Raskin, Governor, Federal Reserve Board, Feb 28, 2013
A sitting Federal Reserve Governor put FoamAroma in the same sentence as GitHub and Snapchat, in an official speech, hosted on federalreserve.gov. That is a third-party endorsement and a .gov citation that no marketing budget can manufacture.
Blade Kotelly, a lecturing professor at MIT (Cambridge, MA), invited Craig to present remote video sessions to his class three times from 2013 to 2014, covering the creation, design, and features of FoamAroma. In a later unsolicited follow-up, three faculty members from the same MIT Gordon Engineering Program recorded their own taste test of the lid.
Watch the MIT faculty taste test → · Blade Kotelly faculty profile →
National coverage in the WSJ's small-business and invention reporting.
Read on wsj.com → · Download the article (PDF, Feb 9 2013) → (WSJ link is subscription-only; PDF copy provided by Craig)
Early hometown-press coverage of Craig and the FoamAroma lid out of Clark County.
The Specialty Coffee Association on FoamAroma and the to-go experience.
Interview with Craig on the leading specialty-coffee blog.
A digital feature that illustrates the lid from both the business-owner and consumer perspectives.
FoamAroma referenced in Perfect Daily Grind's coffee-education coverage.
Craig's elevator pitch for FoamAroma on MSNBC's Your Business.
A founder feature in web.com's small-business forum.
A published trade-press Q&A covering retailer challenges, cost-benefit, the lid's specific innovations, materials, and sustainability. Strong source material for product and FAQ copy.
Read the Q&A (PDF, Feb 2013) → (no public web link exists; transcript provided by Craig)
Craig on coffee lids and the to-go experience. An edited MP3 is also available.