In a post last week I tongue-in-cheekly suggested that the only space left for the weed-like coffee giant Starbucks to expand would be in "mini-kiosks throughout shopping mall parking lots."
Well, there's a lesson to be learned in our wonderful world of marketing:
Today's tongue-in-cheek
is tomorrow's carved-in-stone
Seems that as I was typin' up the post itself, the century-and-a-half-old Eight O'Clock Coffee company was, according to Brandweek, "setting up shop in malls' parking lots to create coffee klatches among customers eagerly awaiting the openings."
The promotion was one of a handful free coffee giveaways to mark this year's Black Friday, and while others provided samples in malls and even at tollbooths (hello Maxwell House!), only Eight O'Clock corralled shoppers as per my what-once-was-facetious-but-is-now-gospel vision (and did it with the name Black Coffee Friday).
Gotta be careful where I stick my tongue...