David Steingard, who co-founded Laughing Man in 2011, still runs the Tribeca café day-to-day and led its 2024 franchise push — but the Laughing Man trademark itself was sold outright to Keurig Green Mountain in 2014 and now belongs to Keurig Dr Pepper (NASDAQ: KDP). At single-café scale, no labor, environmental, or sourcing record exists to weigh either way; the person accountable for how this café runs is still the founder who built it, not the company that owns its name.