There’s a restaurant in Toronto that’s been promoting a Valentine’s Day weekend full of delicious food, romantic gifts, and slipping into the bathroom with your loved one for a little dessert – of the ‘bring your own condom’ variety.
According to their Facebook page and a whole bunch of press that has now spread worldwide, last week Mildred’s Temple Kitchen in Liberty Village announced that, between February 12-15th, they’d be encouraging their patrons to resist the socially accepted confines of waiting until the bedroom to have their Valentine’s Day plans come to a climax; instead inviting them to the unisex bathrooms to throw down some love juice.
From there, a bunch of prude Mommy bloggers and even more angry patrons-to-be began losing their middle-aged shit over the idea, in spite of the restaurant going to lengths to make sure it’s sanitary and sexy. As a result, they regretfully pulled the idea, claiming instead ‘they were just trying to have some fun’.
Admittedly, I’d never heard of the restaurant prior to this ‘promotion’ and, as a 27-yr-old male who generally opts for Sneaky Dee’s nachos over picked spruce tip remoulade (though the ricotta gnocchi sounds pretty good right now), I’m probably not going to become a regular – unless this weekend affair were to turn into the restaurant’s modus operandi. In other words, is there value to the school that says they should be catering to their regulars, not freaking them out? Regardless, anyone claiming that Mildred’s invitation, which put an independent Toronto restaurant on the worldwide map, was a bad PR move clearly doesn’t understand the basics of consumer marketing.
I’ve always defaulted to the side of the rule-bender, so its expected that I felt slightly disappointed when I found the idea had been scrapped. That there are enough people hell-bent to play it safe eternally to squash a fantastic, fresh concept like this demonstrates why many Torontonians kind of blow; in some people’s Toronto, there’s just simply no value in shaking things up.
globalrecess 