They were giving out a free combo meal every week for a year.
Ignoring the health aspect, that's actually a pretty decent deal. If a meal is $7, that's $364 in value over 52 weeks. If you camp for 8 hours, that's getting paid the equivalent of $45.50/hr after tax, which is over a 6 figure wage after adding in taxes.
True, and if you did it with your spouse, you could both go out once a week for a year. In my younger days, I might have considered it.
I admit, my wife and I waited in line for a grand opening "free year's worth of pizza for the first 100 people" thing a year or so ago (I think we have about 20 left each -- we haven't managed to average once a week). Of course, it wasn't a very famous chain, so we managed to be about the 89th and 90th people in line while only waiting for an hour!
Just outside of downtown Houston on Gray there are two Starbucks on the same corner. It's a high density location and there is enough business going both directions on the road that it is apparently worth having a second location so drivers don't have to make a left turn across traffic either direction. Sign of the Apocalypse?
Has anyone been inside the Barnes & Noble store recently? I don't know if they still have their in-store cafe, but I used to count that as the THIRD Starbucks location at the intersection.
The Target at uptown in Albuquerque has a Starbucks inside with some nice windows where you can look out across the road at......Starbucks.
In the major shopping center near me (coincidentally, the same one the afore-mentioned pizza place is in) there's a Target with a Starbucks, a Barnes & Noble with a Starbucks, and I've heard that they may be planning to open a standalone Starbucks too!
Back when I was growing up in the outer suburbs, there used to be a freeway exit that had two Waffle Houses, and I used to think
that was crazy. But Waffle house has nothing on Starbucks!