The internet is beginning to have a field day with what some critics are calling “the worst coupon of all time“. Otha’s coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York is offering a coupon via Google Offers for “free napkins when you buy coffee.”
Seriously.
Just be sure to read the fine print: there’s a ten-napkin limit. And the coupon expires on April 29th.
If you’re planning on spilling your drink at Otha’s Coffee, then, be sure you can clean it up with ten napkins or less. And please do it sometime in the next seven weeks, or you may not get any napkins at all!
So what coffee shop could possibly be so stingy with napkins, that you’d need a coupon to get your hands on them? Some skeptics are calling the coupon a joke, a tongue-in-cheek offer, or an obvious ploy for free publicity. Which means anyone writing about it is just taking the bait.
But employees of Otha’s insist they’re not kidding. “The coupon is real,” an employee named Phil told Coupons in the News. The coffee shop’s “limit on napkins can rub people the wrong way,” he explained. So “Otha’s has publicly offered the promotion a number of times on our chalkboard. Presenting it on the internet simply enables us to reach more people.”
And that they have. A tiny coffee shop tucked under the elevated section of the M train as it rattles over Broadway, virtually unknown to anyone outside Brooklyn, is now creating buzz all over. And at least being called the most ridiculous coupon ever, is better than being called the worst, most insensitive and insulting coupon ever.
If you can’t make it to Otha’s to redeem this valuable coupon before it expires next month, fear not. “Google has a default setting for coupons to expire,” Phil explained. “When it does, we hope to extend or offer the coupon again.”
Well, that’s a relief. The only thing worse than needing a coupon for napkins, is needing napkins and being stuck with an expired coupon.
As for Otha’s, what do they say about there being no such thing as bad publicity? Whatever the cost of giving away (ten!) free napkins to each coupon-bearer, the fact that people are talking about it at all, is probably priceless.
