Had lunch with Airborne's COO Andrew "The Z" Zeidel yesterday, and on the last bite of his salad, he dropped a brown glob of balsamic vinegar dressing on his crisp, blue shirt.
His immediate reaction was to jump for the napkin and water, but--knowing his extreme anal-retentive preparedness--I asked if he happened to have a Tide toGo pen on him. 
He had never heard of one, but after I explained how Tide toGo saved my life after I dripped rusty red tortilla soup on a never-before-worn Egyptian cotton shirt at the start of a day of crucial meetings in L.A.last month, he was intrigued.
So, hoping for an extreme Pow! moment, I asked Melanie, our waitress at The Shed, if the restaurant happened to have one on hand.
Unfortunately for The Z, it was not meant to be. Dry cleaners, here we come.
So here's the point of this ramble:
Tide toGo pens
should be
STANDARD EQUIPMENT
in ALL restaurants!
Just think about it for a second--where do most food-related spills occur? Where there's food, of course. And other than the kitchen, I can't think of a place with more food than restaurants (okay, there's farms and supermarkets, but you get my point).
Consider the incredible goodwill generated from a couple of rubs of Tide's magic wand at your table as you fret over the wine stain, the grease stain, or the mustard stain--increased tips for the wait staff and great word-of-mouth buzz (are you listening Andy Sernovitz?) for the restaurant. Why, you may even have a story for the Tide toGo website!
So restaurant owners, add a few of these thingamajigs to your next supply order.
Or better still, perhaps A.G. Lafley of Tide's parent co. Procter and Gamble could expand his market and send restaurant owners a few hundred thousand samples.
Another valuable public service from Surprise Central--staining cherished clothes since 1959.