What an interesting promotion!

Today and today only, July 10th, is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A (or maybe everywhere?!) Bottom line - if you dress like a cow, you get a free meal from Chick-fil-A. How fun! You can check out the website they created for the event here. The site even includes a costume kit that you can use! I really like how they integrated the different calendar icons to make it super easy for people to remember the date on several popular applications.

So print off the costume, put it on and head over to Chick-fil-A today for your free meal! Heck, belt out a big MOOO for me. Please.

P.S.- It would probably be really fun to work there today.

P.P.S. - Thanks Frances for passing this along!

At this year’s IFT show in Anaheim, CA, TIC Gums surprised attendees with the Gum Guru - live in person!!

Oh boy, was he a hit! Turns out he’s quite the ladies’ man!

Even media reps were impressed. They hounded him for interviews and he happily obliged. Here’s FoodNavigator asking him about IFT and TIC Gums’ latest products.

 How did the Gum Guru respond?

Two BIG thumbs up!

Go to ticgums.com and you can vote for your favorite Gum Guru!

YES! Get your Snyder’s of Hanover® pretzels ready, heat up your trusty hot glue gun and prepare for a WILD ride! Snyder’s and Busch Gardens® in Williamsburg, VA are holding “The Pretzel Coaster Build-off Contest” a special roller coaster building contest that is sure to be hours of crafty fun for the whole family!   

From now until June 15, 2009, Snyder’s of Hanover will be accepting online photos of amazing pretzel coaster creations at http://coastercontest.snydersofhanover.com/. The builders behind the six best creations will be awarded tickets and travel vouchers to participate in a special pretzel coaster build-off showdown being held July 16 at Busch Gardens. They will compete against each other and the clock during an in-park competition to build Busch Gardens’ hypercoaster, Apollo’s Chariot. The grand prize winner will be awarded four Platinum Passes, valid for admission and in-park discounts for two years at World of Discovery parks throughout the United States.  And the Grand Prize only gets better with a year’s supply of Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels! Estimated retail value for grand prize is more than $1,350.  For full contest rules, visit snydersofhanover.com. 

Clara Cannucciari has been through the troubling economic times of the 1930s, so today’s credit crisis is more of an opportunity to share her frugal wisdom than panic. Her YouTube series called Great Depression Cooking was created by her grandson Christopher who started filming her cooking in her kitchen.  It has exploded and now her own DVD is going to be released soon. Oh, the power of YouTube!

Not only do you get to watch how she makes hearty, inexpensive meals but she adds in her childhood memories. It’s a piece of history. Check it out.

KFC has taken an interesting approach to introducing their new “Fresh Taste Best” campaign - by fixing potholes for free.  Reaching out to cities like Chicago, IL and their home of Louisville, Ky, KFC has been offering to repair the annoying holes and then brand them with the message “Re-freshed by KFC.”

It might seem like a crazy idea but the need is definitely there. KFC estimated that U.S. roads are plagued with more than 350 million potholes. “That’s one mini-canyon for every man, woman and child in America.”

Reactions have been mixed. Chicago wasn’t open to the idea since they don’t allow any branded messages on city streets or sidewalks. But finding the necessary funding for on-going street repairs is always a problem, so other citys (yet-to-be named) might be more open to their unique offer.

I think it’s a great PR stunt, plus it leaves a lasting brand message.  What are your thoughts?

Scans of sandwiches = Interesting blog that makes me very hungry.

Find more at http://www.scanwiches.com

If you had visited www.skittles.com earlier today you would have seen a live feed from Twitter. Not a traditional corporate website.  In a bold Web 2.0/social media move (and great PR stunt) Skittles decided to let their consumers do the talking. So now anyone who tweets about skittles will now appear on their “homepage.”

But then again, maybe not.

Because NOW if you visit www.skittles.com you are directed to their group page on Facebook. After much talk about why Twitter (since it’s any “older” crowd and old people don’t eat skittles) and perhaps some unbecoming tweets, it seems they have given into peer pressure and resorted to teen-friendly Facebook. But no worries, you can still find the live Twitter feed under the chatter button on the Skittles widget-thingy.

It’s an interesting move and Skittles is getting TONS of press about it (even I’m blogging about it!). By scraping all of the corporate stuff (which, truth be told, probably didn’t bring many of their target audience to the site anyway) and letting the consumers control the content the site becomes instantly fresh. I just wonder  - does anybody care? And if so, how long will people care? If they integrate other social media promotions it might be effective. But we’ll have to see.

This was on Cool News this morning. Needless to say, I will no longer be eating canned mushrooms (not a big loss), sauerkraut (not a problem since I never ate it before), beer (wine is just fine, thank you) or peanut butter (this makes me very, very sad.) 

While you’re banning peanut butter, you might also want to consider dropping canned mushrooms, suggests E.J. Levy in the New York Times (2/13/09). Although canned mushrooms, unlike some peanut butter, have not been reported as subject to salmonella contamination, they could contain more than “20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams,” or an “average of 75 mites.” Sauerkraut, meanwhile, “may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice.”

Any more contamination than that will provoke action by the F.D.A., according to its booklet (link) outlining “acceptable levels of … ‘defects’ for a range of food products.” These “defects” include insect and rodent filth, mold, mammalian excreta, rot, mildew, sand and grit, as well as “foreign matter,” such as “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.).” Among other things, this means that “you’re probably ingesting one or two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it.”

This is because the F.D.A. “considers the significance of these defects to be ‘aesthetic’ or ‘offensive to the senses,’ which is to say merely icky” as opposed to actually dangerous. The standard is based “on economic grounds” and the premise that it’s simply “impractical to grow, harvest, or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.” For the record, peanut butter “may contain 145 bug parts for an 19-ounce jar; five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.” Enjoy!

link

Your Shopping List Made Better Sort items by your store’s aisles when you print your list See Shoppers Club savings with one click Add items to your list from recipes Create unlimited lists and save them indefinitely

From Gourmet Retailer:

Wegmans.com now enables users to make shopping lists that help them spot savings, check prices before going to the store, remember ingredients for recipes, quickly find items for their special dietary needs and even save lists. The updated functionality was recently rolled out after consumers weighed in on site improvements.

“Customers gave us lots of feedback following the launch of our new shopping list builder early last year,” explained Jo Natale, director of media relations for Wegmans Food Markets. “So we returned to the drawing board to incorporate their ideas, and the result is a much-improved tool that is easy to use, will help customers remember items they need [and] save money and time.”

To test pilot the list builder after the changes were incorporated, the grocer worked with a group called Eyes on Usability at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The group included some wegmans.com “list” users, who had earlier shared their ideas for the site, as well as others who’d never tried it. Their comments and observations helped shape many of the features now in place.

For instance, now adding or removing items takes a single click, and users have a shortcut to composing a list with the “Jump Start Your List” section, which features the 26 items most people buy often.

My comments - Pretty cool that Wegman’s is making it easier for consumers to save money and plan their purchases - much needed for our current economy! I did think it was interesting that shrimp and salmon was on the list of 26 most purchased items. Really?

Perfect creative inspiration for a rainy Wednesday morning.  Find more here!