Chick-fil-A – Life In A Word

Advert Converts

Texting while driving has quickly become the norm, at least in U.S. states where it continues to be legal. Not a day goes by where I’m not witness to a slow or erratic driver, the annoying behavior the direct result of a smartphone. My car horn gets a regular punch, reminding drivers, “HEY… the light just turned green!” All of which makes the notion of billboards as a driving distraction almost obsolete.

Like most things, billboards had their young and innocent days. They popped up on interstates and major thoroughfares almost as soon as cars themselves did; bright, colorful advertisements meant to plant seeds in driver brains for future purchases. At last count there were over 350,000 billboards in America alone.

Unlike smartphones however, billboards earn nothing but a passing glance as you speed by. Their images and words are simple by design so you “get the picture” in an instant. A few scientific studies went to great lengths to prove billboards increased the potential for accidents. Others showed they really had no impact at all. Whichever is true, billboards stubbornly continue a part of the urban landscape.

But no matter how I spin this topic, we’re just talking about a straightforward means of advertising. What’s so interesting about that, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

Consider the lifespan of a billboard. The artwork is created on a smaller scale, reproduced to billboard size (previously by hand, now by computer), mounted up high on a roadside frame, and then allowed to distract drivers for months. But eventually the billboard comes back down and you’re left with 700 square feet of heavy-duty used vinyl. What now – off to the dump?

Not if you’re Rareform. This company converts adverts into bags, totes, and duffles. You can purchase anything from a travel surfboard bag to a soft-sided cooler, all fashioned from billboard vinyl. You can even buy a cross-body bag for your laptop, with a cushy interior made of recycled water bottles. Talk about “walking advertisements”, eh?

I really admire people who think outside of the box (because I find it so much more comfortable inside). Rareform thinks outside of the board. They brokered deals with advertising agencies for the used vinyl, hired cleaners, designers, sewers, and photographers to produce their one-of-a-kind products, and then created a website to bring it all to you. As Rareform’s founders put it, “We’re in the business of change… and we believe billboards deserve a second chance.” Considering they stock over 50,000 unique re-creations in their warehouse, I’d say they’re on to something.

A billboard can be a cooler if it wants to be

Billboards never really caught my eye until now. Sure, I enjoy their creative advertising tactics, like using several billboards spread out over a mile or two, each one containing part of a message about a business you’ll find off the next off-ramp. Or how about the ones like Chick-fil-A’s, with three-dimensional characters in front of the boards? In 2010 in North Carolina, you could find a billboard of a giant, juicy steak with a big fork sticking out of it, emitting the scent of black pepper and charcoal. Ready to grill?

Today’s billboards, of course, have gone digital. You can pack a rotation of advertisements into the same space where there used to be one. On broadcasts of Major League Baseball, you’ll see advertisements on the walls behind home plate as the camera shows the pitcher’s view of the batter. Those advertisements aren’t really in the ballpark; they’ve just been digitally applied back in the television studio.

None of these billboard tricks impress me like the one Rareform conjured up. I mean, what kind of brain looks at a billboard and goes “Hey, that could be a fashionable bag one day!” Not my brain. Rareform not only diverts tons of vinyl from landfills, it then puts it to practical re-use. Makes me want to dumpster-dive my garbage can out back to see if I can come up with a trash rehash of my own.

Some content sourced from the Rareform website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Strange Bedfellows

Welcome to Masters Week, sports fans! Even if you don’t know the first thing about professional golf, you’ve probably heard of The Masters. The tournament begins again this Thursday (for the eighty-sixth time) at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. If you have nothing better to do this weekend, you can watch a dozen mind-numbing hours of the television coverage. While you’re at it you’ll discover the Masters traditions, like the champion’s green jacket, the clubhouse top-story “Crow’s Nest” (where the amateur golfers reside), the famous pimento cheese sandwiches, and of course, Waffle House. Wait, Waffle House?

Question: When do waffles and golf belong in the same sentence? Answer: When it’s April at The Masters. Why? Because alongside the golf hats, shirts, and commemorative this-and-that for purchase at the souvenir shop, you can buy a limited-edition pair of Adidas golf shoes for your long walk along the course. The shoes will set you back $200 – a little pricier than most – but hey, they’re limited-edition. You’ll be among the select few advertising Waffle House on their heels.

Before you think waffles and golf shoes are the most random “pairing” (ha) in the history of merchandising, remember; The Masters is in Georgia. So is Waffle House. Their headquarters is right down the road in Atlanta and they have over 400 restaurants across the Peach State (way more than any other state). In other words, a pair of Waffle House Adidas at The Masters may earn as many thumbs-up as strange looks.

Speaking of strange, Adidas took the breakfast look of its limited-edition shoe to an extreme. Besides the rear-facing logo, a square-after-square print runs along the side, in a muted tone meant to represent waffles and syrup. Adidas calls it “batter-like colorway” (a phrase you’ll never hear again, ever). Including syrup in the design and labeling it “batter-like” might be how Adidas keeps distance (and lawsuits) from competitor Nike, which famously created its first shoe using a waffle iron. Whatever. Shoes and waffles still make strange bedfellows. I mean, look at the marketing photos spaced throughout this post. Clever yes, but isn’t your first thought, “Get your dirty sneakers off my dining table!“

[Props to Adidas, if you have buyer’s remorse with your breakfast kicks, at least you also get a shoebox looking exactly like a teeny, tiny Waffle House.]

I’m not on my soapbox to knock Waffle House; quite the opposite. Any restaurant keeping the doors open sixty years after the very first plate deserves my respect. So does a restaurant where waffles are the main event because I love waffles. If they’re on the menu, I’ll order waffles whether at Waffle House, Belgian-style, or made-to-order at the finest champagne brunch. I’ve even been known to eat an Eggo or two. Ideally, top your grids with strawberries and Chantilly cream, with syrup on the side for dipping. Heaven on earth.

I’ve only been to Waffle House twice in my life. Was it a memorable experience? NO. Both times I perched on a backless stool at the counter. Both times I sat next to characters I’d never, ever choose to dine with. Finally, the Waffle House kitchen is right there in the wide-open so you can watch your breakfast being prepared. Wouldn’t say it was the most sanitary process I ever saw.

Waffle House does have its charms, however. The original menu had just sixteen items; today, well over a hundred. Each location is open all-day-all-night, which has some customers believing Waffle House doors don’t lock. Each location also has a jukebox, including favorites from the “Waffle Records” label (Ex. They’re Cooking Up My Order by Alfreda Gerald, released in 2006). Finally, two percent of all restaurant eggs in America are cracked at Waffle House. Two percent is rarely a big number but in this case, it’s got a lot of zeroes.

Waffle House did make a famous mistake once. In the 1960s, the chain was approached by one S. Truett Cathy, looking for an outlet for his proprietary chicken sandwich. The sandwich was added to the menu for a short time, but sales were so strong Waffle House worried its waffles would lose the spotlight. So Cathy moved on, and of course, Chick-fil-A soon became an even more popular place to eat.

To be fair, the Adidas shoe isn’t the first time waffles and golf crossed paths. In 1996, Kevin Costner starred as a down-on-his-luck golfer in Tin Cup, which included a memorable scene at a Waffle House just before the U.S. Open. Somehow this worked better than waffle-golf shoes.

According to its website, Waffle House has 10 locations in my home state of Colorado versus 439 locations in Georgia. Do the math. If a hundred Georgians order two waffles a day in each of those restaurants, Waffle House is cooking up over 600,000 Peach State waffles every week. WHOA. Now there’s my excuse to go to The Masters!

Some content sourced from the ESPN.com article, “Waffle House and Adidas team up for waffle-themed golf shoes”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #12

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

We’ll be “playing” the keyboard for the next few weeks. Bag #12 – of 21 bags of pieces – added another seven keys to the five I constructed last week, which puts us not quite halfway across the board. I’m showing the complicated mechanical action in the photo because once the keys are installed it’ll be hard to see. Notice how pressing the piano key down makes the rounded counterweight to the left go up. The weight strikes the piano string above it (once inside the piano), and Voila! Music.

When you work on one of these Lego projects for almost ten hours you notice things. Little things. Today I realized, for the first time ever, Lego imprints its logo on every one of the thousands of raised “bumps” on its pieces (like the beige bumps just to the left of the black piano keys here). A perfectionist would have all of those logos facing the same direction. Nope, not gonna happen; we’re on a one-way street here.

Running Build Time: 9.6 hours. Musical accompaniment: Handel’s Water Music. Leftover pieces: 3

Conductor’s Note: Water Music is a collection of short pieces for a large orchestra. Because Handel wrote the set of suites for King George I for a concert on the River Thames, Water Music is often performed outdoors. Next to his choral work Messiah (“HA…lle-LU-jah!”), Water Music is Handel’s best-known composition.

This is Dough-NUTS!

Earlier this week, Krispy Kreme held the grand opening of its newest store just a few miles from my house. You’d have thought the first customers through the doors won the state lottery. I’ve never seen such an amped-up bunch of doughnut-lovers, at least the ones who stepped up to the television cameras. Even the news anchors caught the fever, practically giddy with their coverage, which in turn had me thinking, “Hello? Isn’t there anything more important going on in Colorado Springs?” Welcome to America, where the opening of a fast-food restaurant makes headline news.

Full disclosure: I’ve had a Krispy Kreme doughnut and they’re positively scrumptious. Put a box of the original glazed in front of me and I’ll polish off at least half of ’em. But that was years ago, back when Krispy Kreme was new and novel. Today? I take ’em or leave ’em, and apparently I leave ’em because I can’t tell you the last time I ate any brand of doughnut. Regardless, doughnuts aren’t really my topic today; doughnut customers are. Specifically, the ones who would get up at oh-dark-hundred just to say they’re among the first through Krispy Kreme’s doors on opening day.

Maybe these nuts for doughnuts are the same people who purchase tickets to the opening of a feature film; the ones who wait hours in line, watch the sold-out midnight show, then fall into bed bleary-eyed at 3am. I want to get down on my knees and plead with them, “Hey you, the movie will be shown a hundred more times and will be just as good as the first showing”. Why give up a good night’s sleep to say you saw it first? Krispy Kreme will sell their doughnuts for years and they’ll taste just as good next year (and the year after that) as they do on “Grand Opening Day”. Why the rush?

Here’s something else I don’t understand. This same fast-food frenzy applied to Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out Burger, and two weeks ago, Whataburger when they opened their first stores in town. The local news gave us updates for months until their “big days”, then cars backed up by the dozens through the drive-thru, then all you’d hear from neighbors was, “Did you hear what just opened?” like it was the juiciest bit of gossip ever. I can think of a dozen local, family-owned restaurants opening in the past several years, and not one of them earned the same hype as these national-chain fast-food commoners. It’s like we Americans are addicted to fast food. Which of course, we are.

If I’d kept the local news on all day Tuesday, I would’ve seen the same on-the-spot reporter at Krispy Kreme, giving updates every two or three hours on the progress of the grand opening. Instead, I just pulled up the news channel website and watched her short videos, one after the other after the other. This reporter was at Krispy Kreme the entire day (that’s 5:30am-10:00pm for those who are counting). She managed to look as fresh and bubbly with the first interview as with the last. Probably hyped up on doughnut sugar.

At least she was getting paid. Those first customers chose to be there voluntarily, which leads me to this question: what does the rest of your day feel like when you’ve been up since 3:00am? One customer thought to pack pillows and blankets into her car for her three (pajama-clad) kids, so they could sleep while her husband waited in a line so long, the camera couldn’t find the end of it. Another customer looked and talked like he’d just received his U.S. citizenship from a very faraway land, espousing the merits of the Krispy Kreme over the lesser doughnuts of his homeland. A third customer, several dozen-doughnut boxes stacked carefully in her hands, boasted how popular she was going to be when she showed up at work (and between you and me, she looked like she’d had plenty of Krispy Kremes already).

Here’s my favorite part of this “news story”. This isn’t the first Krispy Kreme to open in Colorado Springs. Years ago, when KK doughnuts were a new rage, Colorado Springs got its first store. A few years later it closed. After that, you could only get pre-boxed Krispy Kremes at a few convenience stores around town. After that you couldn’t get them at all. Then several years pass. Now we’re doing it all over again, with the same amount of hype. To which I conclude: What does it say about your city when headline news that doesn’t deserve to be headline news becomes headline news all over again?

Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Some content sourced from the Krispy Kreme website.

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Lego Grand Piano – Update #11

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

Today’s build stepped away from the body of the piano (again). Bag #11 – of 21 bags of pieces – started out as a bit of a mystery. If I’d looked closer at Mr. Instruction Manual, I’d have known what was coming. At some point in the thirty-five-minute assembly it became obvious. Keys, Francis Scott. Piano keys.

I put the Bag #11 keys side-by-side with the piano in the second photo so you can get a sense of scale. They’re kind of a “module”, which should insert comfortably into the front of the piano later. My next several builds may be more of the same. Remarkably, the keys are weighted just like a real piano. Press one down and the red-tipped weight way at the other end brings it back up. Think see-saw. Lest this photo has you thinking “easy build”, Bag #11 contained well over 200 pieces.

Running Build Time: 8.7 hours. Musical accompaniment: Ravel’s Boléro (twice through). Leftover pieces: 2

Conductor’s Note: Boléro is one of my favorite classical pieces and Ravel’s most famous work. Listeners either love it or hate it. It’s a fifteen-minute variation on two themes, with the orchestra building slowly to its crash-bang finale. The repeating themes are so simple I could probably play them with just the few piano keys I built today. Ravel composed Boléro as a ballet (it does sound like a dance or a march) and predicted most orchestras would refuse to play it. He was wrong. Boléro also gained considerable notoriety as the theme music for the 1970s movie 10, starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Comfort Food For Thought

If you read my post last week, you know I was a little distressed over the recent shootings in my country. Blogging was intended to bring me a comfort in troubled times. In hindsight, maybe I was overthinking the situation. Maybe all I needed was comfort food. Enter Chick-fil-A. The popular fast-food chicken restaurant may never be forgiven for removing their awesome coleslaw from the “Sides” menu a few years back, but just this week they brought a new guest to the party. Hello, macaroni and cheese.

Amanda Norris is Chick-fil-A’s executive director of menu and packaging. She’s now my new best friend. A chicken sandwich and waffle fries, with a second side of mac & cheese? Heaven in a to-go bag, my friends. As Amanda puts it, “Mac & cheese is the quintessential comfort food… the perfect pairing… but it’s also great on its own as a snack”. In other words, I’ve just been given permission to drive-thru Chick-fil-A and order only mac & cheese. I’m a kid again!

Chick-fil-A’s mac & cheese is made with a special blend of cheddar, Parmesan, and Romano, and baked fresh every day. Uh, push the pause button here. Three cheeses sounds a little fancy for the mac & cheese I had in mind. If the restaurant really wanted to arrow the bullseye, they should’ve done a deal with Kraft Foods and offered the mac & cheese. You know the one – the proud little blue-and-gold box of the “cheesiest”, with the pile of pasta curls and pouch of powdered who-knows-what? There’s simply no equal.

Kraft introduced its “Macaroni & Cheese Dinner” in 1937 with the slogan, “Make a meal for four in nine minutes”. Back then – the Depression years – you could buy two boxes of Kraft for a single food-rationing stamp (Make a meal for eight…!) Fast-forward to the 1980’s, when my wife and I were managing our shoestring food budget. At least we knew we could buy Kraft mac & cheese. Three boxes for a dollar!

Three-cheese blend aside, I agree with Chick-fil-A. Mac & cheese is the quintessential comfort food. Comfort food is defined as “… providing a nostalgic or sentimental value to someone”, and “…tends to be high in calories, high in carbs, and easy to prepare”. Well hey, you might as well just say, “Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner”! Sure, you could turn to other comfort foods on Wikipedia’s short-list, like chicken soup, chocolate-chip cookies or grilled cheese (Tater Tots and sugary breakfast cereals didn’t make the list – for shame!), but take my money – and give me comfort – Kraft mac & cheese earns the top spot. Just ask any Canadian; it’s the most-purchased grocery item in the country.

Recently, mac & cheese sits side-by-side with Brussels sprouts as a trendy restaurant offering, even in the fancy places. The problem is in the spin – all those added ingredients for a supposedly better taste. Lobster mac & cheese. Mac & cheese pizza (topped with shredded Colby-Jack). Mac & cheese pie (with a bready crust). Even Kraft messed with the Original (“Star Wars-shaped” pasta? Come on!). Admittedly, their “Shells & Cheese Dinner” with the Velveeta cheese sauce is a pretty good option. But it’s not the Original.

Comfort foods are further defined as “… food associated with the security of childhood. They are believed to be a great coping mechanism for rapidly soothing negative feelings.” There it is, and that’s what I need right now. The couple of Kraft boxes in my pantry are calling me home.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”, and the foxnews.com article, “Chick-fil-A’s Mac and Cheese Hits Menus Nationwide”.

Poultry Par Excellence

Among its endless and varied topics, Wikipedia includes a list of “notable chicken restaurants” (just about all of them U.S.-based). In the fast-food subcategory alone, you find over 75 fowl food-stops. I recognized about one in ten as I scanned the list, including Bojangles’, Bush’s, Church’s, El Pollo Loco, KFC, Popeye’s, Raising Cane’s, Wild Wings, and Zaxby’s. That’s a lot of drive-thru chicken. Yet put ’em all in the back seat, because I side with those clever Holstein dairy cows, begging me to “Eat Mor Chikin”. And I do eat more – at Chick-fil-A.

As the kids morphed from teenagers to adults, fast food pretty much disappeared from our eating-out options. Starbucks aside (because coffee is the elixir of life), we stopped navigating the circuitous drive-thru’s of McDonald’s and the like. Our palates demanded better and healthier. More appealing sit-down options beckoned on every street corner. But Chick-fil-A stubbornly persisted in the mix, as if waving a banner with the words, “Exception To The Rule”.

No matter how you label it, there’s a lot to like about Chick-fil-A. For one, it’s the great American success story. Its origins trace back to founder S. Truett Cathy, and a 1960’s-era restaurant near Atlanta called Dwarf House. Its popularity swelled through twenty years of growth in shopping mall food courts. Its first free-standing restaurant opened in 1986. Today, you’ll find more than 2,400 Chick-fil-A’s scattered across the continent, including a prominent three-story location in mid-town Manhattan, and several in Toronto, Canada.

It’s all about the food, of course. Chick-fil-A’s most-ordered entree – the classic chicken sandwich (breaded, with pickles and a butter-toasted bun) – is a recipe unchanged since its inception fifty years ago. The signature waffle fries accompanying the entrees are the most popular item on the entire menu. And Chick-fil-A’s lemonade and milkshakes have a devoted following all by themselves. Some patrons cruise the drive-thru for nothing but the drinks.

There’s more to like about Chick-fil-A. Their brand of customer service is exceptional. Chick-fil-A is the only restaurant I know where you’ll hear the words “my pleasure” in exchange for your “thank you”. Between your order, payment, and the window itself, you’ll probably get “my pleasure'” three times in a single drive-thru. That kind of courtesy never gets old.

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

How about the numbers? Chick-fil-A is the third-biggest U.S. restaurant chain ranked by sales (behind only Starbucks and McDonald’s). Their sales have quintupled in the last ten years, to over $10.2 billion. Chick-fil-A’s market share among fast-food chicken restaurants hovers around 33%. Their nearest competitor – KFC – is a distant 15.3%.

Here’s one more reason to love Chick-fil-A: they’re closed on Sundays (as well as Thanksgiving and Christmas). In the company’s own words, “Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and of directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business.” No matter the faith angle, you have to respect a restaurant giving its entire workforce the day off once a week. Not to mention, a closed Chick-fil-A just makes the heart grow fonder.

A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) profile on Chick-fil-A shows they don’t mess with success. McDonald’s regularly tests its patrons with trendy offerings (“Bacon Smokehouse Burger”). Burger King reinvents itself with its upcoming “Impossible” (veggie) Whopper. Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A maintains a little-changed menu of what’s been selling for decades: responsibly sourced, domestically produced, no-filler-no-preservative chicken.

At the conclusion of the WSJ article, I found one hundred reader comments about Chick-fil-A. I scanned half of them, and every last one was positive. That’s a first for me. In today’s cynical world, 100% positive feedback may be the most telling statistic of all.

Final factoid. For all my allegiance to Chick-fil-A, I must admit I didn’t know the origin of the name – until now. Go figure, it’s just a mash-up of “chicken fillet”. And the “-A”? “Grade A”, a subtle nod to the quality of the Chick-fil-A product. No wonder those cows push you to lay off beef. They’re offering chicken par excellence instead.

Some content sourced from the official website of Chick-fil-A.

Which Came First?

When my son wrapped up his undergraduate college years, he gradually reduced the stock in his refrigerator to just about nothing. Living on a shoestring budget, he wasn’t about to purchase food he didn’t need after graduation. I’ll never forget the phone call one of those last couple of nights. He told us – rather proudly – he’d made a meal with two eggs… and a can of processed chicken. A “chicken scramble” if you will. To which I replied, “ick“. If we’d been on FaceTime he’d have seen my face turn a lovely shade of green.

Some foods were just not intended to be consumed in the same bite. I can’t think of a better example than chicken and eggs. All chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens, so why on earth would we eat them together? Can we skip the biology class and agree – at least by one definition – chickens and eggs are essentially the same “thing”? And really; how often have you found them side-by-side on your breakfast plate? Hopefully never.

The memory of my son’s kitchen creation locked itself away in my brain until recently, when Starbucks decided to meddle with their sous vide egg bites menu. Not content to offer just “Egg White & Pepper” and “Bacon & Gruyere”, Starbucks now offers “Chicken Chorizo Tortilla”, described as “perfectly cooked, cage-free sous vide egg bites, including chicken chorizo, and…” and… and… and I stopped reading right there. I couldn’t get past eggs and chicken in the same offering, gag reflex included. I’m not sure I’ll order any egg bites anymore.

To lend credence to my chicken-OR – not chicken-AND – claim, I turned to one of the experts in the field: fast-food icon Chick-Fil-A. CFA offers an extensive breakfast menu (Starbucks does not) so I figured, a restaurant built entirely on chicken would never offer eggs mixed up with chicken. Wrong-o. To my disbelief (and horror), two entrees loom large on CFA’s breakfast menu where you can get plenty of both. Choose from the Egg White Grill: a breakfast portion of grilled chicken stacked with freshly cooked egg whites on an English muffin; or the Chicken, Egg, and Cheese bagel: a boneless breast of chicken along with a folded egg and American cheese. Seriously, who buys this stuff?

I’m not sure who said it, but some would assert “the chicken is merely the egg’s way of reproducing itself”. (The same applies to the caterpillar’s “use” of the butterfly.) I like that, evil as it sounds. Kind of devalues the chicken, but also kind of proclaims: the egg came first. And what about that quandary, “which came first”? There’s not much to discuss if you really think about it. Make the simple choice – science or religion. Science votes for the egg, laid by something that wasn’t quite a chicken (but evolved into one once the egg hatched). Religion votes for the chicken, created by a higher power in those first six days.

Maybe chicken + eggs is the greatest thing never eaten and I just don’t know what I’m missing. I suppose I could ease into the idea one entree at a time. Start with corned-beef hash… with fried eggs. Move to full-on steak… and eggs. Swallow hard over chicken… and waffles (eggs in the batter). Then, at long last, order that new sous vide egg bite from Starbucks. Yeah right, that’ll happen… as soon as we all agree on “which came first”.

Creatures of Habit

WHAT IF Starbucks decided to close its stores for a whole day? Imagine, you’re driving to work with early-morning brain fog, you pass by the most convenient Starbucks, and from the street you see a big “CLOSED” sign behind the glass. Not to be denied, you head for the drive-thru, but your access is blocked by green cones (everything matches at Starbucks). You’re still in denial, so you pull into a parking space, get out of the car, and peer through the darkened windows. Horrors. Your 7×24 caffeine-addiction fixer-upper (well, almost 7×24, but who craves coffee at 3am?) has taken the day off. Are you getting a case of the jitters just reading this paragraph? Is this a Catch-22, because you can’t think up another coffee option until you’ve actually had your morning coffee?

We had a little “sip” of this scenario earlier this week, didn’t we? For reasons that were relevant-today gone-tomorrow (maybe), Starbucks took the high road and delivered several hours of anti-bias training to its employees, closing 8,000 locations in the process. For one interminably-long afternoon and evening on Tuesday, you had to search a lot harder to find your grande no-whip Caramel Macchiato. When Starbucks’ announcement lit up the front-page headlines last week, my first thought wasn’t, “the lines are about to get longer at the bathrooms” (though admittedly, it’s a legitimate concern since I’m a man of frequent visits), nor was my first thought, “we’re about to see a lot of, uh, interesting people at Starbucks now” (because we already do, don’t we?) Rather, my thought was, “how the heck are we gonna cope with several hours of no-Starbucks, when 100 million patrons – you read that right – frequent their stores every week?”

In a related headline, an economist claimed this one-time Starbucks shutdown would cost the company $12 million and be a boon for “coffee competitors” like McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. Laughable. I know those restaurants have their fair share of coffee allegiance these days – if you consider “fair share” less than 1%. No, the world didn’t rotate off its axis on Tuesday, but I also won’t promise patrons didn’t line up at the Starbucks drive-thru hours before the open on Wednesday morning. Our Starbucks habit was ingrained at an early age, well before the competition stepped up. Howard Schultz is a genius.

More likely, the impact of Tuesday’s shutdown is what I refer to as the “Chick-fil-A effect”. If you’re a fan of CFA, you’ve known from the get-go their stores close on Sundays. It’s a simple building block of the founder’s philosophy: CFA employees should spend their Sundays resting and at worship, with family and friends. Now, you might pass Chick-fil-A on a Sunday and think, “Closed. What a nice gesture – more companies should do that.” But I’m pretty sure you’re actually thinking, “Damn – I was really craving a #1 meal, hold the pickle, w/ lemonade”. And that thought will stay with you until Monday. And Tuesday, And Wednesday, or whatever day you next pass by Chick-fil-A. Maybe their alt-slogan should be, “Closure Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” or something like that. It’s as much a business strategy as a thoughtful benefit for CFA employees. On that note – trust me – Starbucks will make up Tuesday’s lost business by the time I hit the “publish” button on this post.

Nothing Bundt Cakes (“Home of the Most Delicious Bundt Cakes Ever!”) is kinda sorta the same animal as Chick-fil-A. For reasons suspiciously vague, NBC allows its franchisees the option to close on Sundays. Google your NBC’s hours before you head over for a white chocolate raspberry bundt or a lemon bundtlet. The next time you find their doors unexpectedly locked, I predict your dreams will be relentlessly invaded by dozens of little flying bundtinis – at least until you satisfy your craving with a purchase. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here’s the irony about today’s musing: I’m typing my post from a Starbucks. I’m sitting quietly at a table, enjoying a grande cold brew with a touch of cream. The baristas are unusually perky (surely a side effect of their recent training). The restaurant feels quiet and “inclusive”. In other words, I didn’t cry over spilt coffee on Tuesday. Instead, I just proved my theory. a) Tuesday afternoon I couldn’t go to Starbucks. b) I wasn’t even planning to go. c) The store closures were in the headlines, which inserted “caffeine denial” into my brain. d) Here I am, just two days later, getting my Starbucks on again.

Touché, Mr. Schultz.