I was in town today for part two of my routine medical (parts three and four still to come, how exciting!), so met up with the Man for lunch. We went to the nearest Bruegger's, a bagel place.
The sandwiches are a bit...confused. Sun-dried tomato paste and hummous and red onion and (of course) cheese leaves your tastebuds wondering what just happened. Still, I approve of Bruegger's because they serve Fair Trade coffee as their main brew, which is unusual for an American chain.
At the moment they are promoting a special offer: the 'Bottomless Mug Deal'. The Man inevitably made some quip about the dangers of trying to serve coffee in a bottomless mug. But anyhow, the deal is that you spend $149.99 on a reusable mug, and for the rest of the year you can get 'free' coffee in it whenever you bring it to a Bruegger's restaurant.
It could work, if you'd planned on visiting Bruegger's a lot anyway. At $2-ish for a cup of coffee, you could win on the deal if you were dedicated to the effort. But think of all the muffins and cookies and bagels (and weird sandwiches) you'd end up buying to go with the coffee. And if you're at all like me half the time you'd forget to bring the wretched mug with you anyway or else you'd lose it somewhere in the car (because there can be such a thing as too many cup-holders), and find it three months later full of mould.
So I don't know. Would you fall for this one?
Livid and I and a few others recently spent a day (yes really) in Berlin shopping in the winter markets, and they had a similar deal going on with gluwein. The reusable mugs were 2.5 euros and the lovely warm gluwein, several of which slipped down very nicely during the course of the day, another 2. If you gave your mug back you got a refund. I liked that idea. I wouldn't go for the Brueggers deal for all the reasons you mention as well as the fact that dawdling around coffee shops full of bagels and cakes with three small boys is my idea of a nightmare!
ReplyDeleteWhat if you break the mug? What if someone steals it? What if you leave it behind? What's to stop you mug-sharing? Sounds fraught with problems to me.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I rather like the sound of the tomato, hummous etc sandwich. Would go down nicely with a mug of gluhwein.
Christmas shopping in Berlin, eh? Next year get yourselves a cheap flight to NYC - I'll meet you there!
ReplyDeleteWell, it's one of those metal-and-plastic mugs, so fairly indestructible. But the other problems are all quite likely.
I'm all in favour of taking your own mug to cafes (which many places encourage) to save on disposables, except that I never remember to bring one. It's as much as I can do to pack the supermarket reusable bags when I'm setting out specifically for the supermarket (they need to start charging for plastic bags here, that'd sort me out).
The sandwich would probably have been ok if only they'd stopped short of the cheese.