Special Offer? I Don't Think So.

The baked potato dominated in the steak accompaniment poll. Keep looking for polls when you check out A and A. I find them so much fun. Now onto the next post...

You want to know what really bugs me? Of course you do! Special offers, that ain't special. Or at least they don't live up to their billing. Case in point. Recently at a mini-golf course the score card had an advertisement on it that had "Kids Eat Free" in big letters taking up the top quarter of the add. The name of the restaurant was also prominent. Then in small type I found the following: "Only available 5-6 pm on Wednesdays".

Now, if you're going to have some kind of special offer to attract customers then don't be pulling something like this. Either make it weekdays or something other than one hour a week. I feel offers like this are mostly just to get people to mistakenly come to the restaurant with their kids in tow at some time other than that measly one hour window and then find out that they can't get the deal, but now that they are there they might as well stay. It's cheesy.

The same goes for a lot of those two for one offers out there that come with all kinds of restrictions in the fine print. If you don't want to offer two for one then don't do it. And don't get me started on the "starting at 66.99 type promos". Has anyone ever got the starting price on one of those deals?

Then of course there is the old change of ownership ploy. You're all excited about your coupon or two for one offer or maybe your free game of mini-golf you earned by getting a hole-in-one your last time out and they tell you that they aren't honouring the offer because it was made by the previous ownership. Their right I suppose, but not exactly the way to get off to a good start with your clientele.