Last night the teens at my house wanted to get up super early before school because they had heard that Denny’s was giving a free Grand Slam breakfast as part of its Super Bowl promotion to all and sundry who came in between 6 a.m and 3 p.m. A free breakfast! A Grand Slam!
A great concept, right?
Not exactly. Everyone was up by 5:30 am and we drove the 4 minutes down San Diego’s El Cajon Boulevard and were in front of the restaurant at precisely 5:55 a.m. — a time when there was sure to be no line.
NOT!
The restaurant was full…and there was a long waiting line out the door.
“No way!” said Greg, 17.
So they decided, since we were up that early and bleary-eyed, they wanted to go to McDonald’s.
So, in the end, it proved to be a GREAT promotion — for McDonald’s.
P.S. They don’t want to go back to Denny’s. They got up early for nothing. How many other customers wouldn’t go in due to the lines and how many other people will leave feeling irked?
Somewhere Ronald McDonald is smiling….
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.