Business

‘It Brings Everyone Together’: Community Shows Strong Support for Baskin Robbins, ‘BOGO’ Promo Reinstated

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New Canaan High School senior Catherine Granito had been sitting at her accustomed corner table at Baskin Robbins last week when she heard a woman’s raised, angry voice from the other end of the ice cream and candy shop. Down near the coolers, a local woman was throwing a fit that would swiftly become the talk of the town, yelling at the teenage workers behind the counter because an ice cream sundae with two hot toppings that her husband had brought home later melted—a sweet treat that had been free as part of a popular buy-one-get-one-free or ‘BOGO’ promotion—and demanding her money back. As captured on surveillance video, she would throw the dessert on the floor behind the counter, then the bag it came in, and returned the following morning to demand a “refund” again, plus gas money for her trouble. “She was loud,” Granito recalled Tuesday from the same table. “You could hear her from across the street.”

Anna Valente, a 1987 NCHS grad who has owned Baskin Robbins for 24 years, considered doing away with the BOGO promotion as a result of the incident, which upset her workers, reasoning that it tends to bring in non-regular customers who are more likely to create such problems.

Instead, Valente turned this week’s promotion into an appreciation night for her employees, and put out a jar to raise money for a New Haven-based nonprofit organization that hosts anger management groups.

Business

Baskin Robbins Owner Plans Password-Coded ‘BOGO’ Trial for Tuesday

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Following a widely discussed tantrum had by a local woman at Baskin Robbins this week, the shop’s owner is seeking to gauge the public’s interest in continuing a longstanding promotion. Though the popular “Buy-One-Get-One free” or “BOGO” Tuesdays at Baskin-Robbins fuel the busiest nights of the week at the Main Street ice cream and candy shop, they also tend to bring in non-regular customers, according to owner Anna Valente. This week, a woman appeared to become dissatisfied after her free 2-scoop sundae with two hot toppings melted, and returned to Baskins, cut the line, berated Valente’s workers then tossed the dessert on the floor behind the counter. The entire scene was caught on video and the woman returned the next morning to demand back the money for the paid dessert her husband had purchased (a banana split) in order to take advantage of the BOGO promotion. The incident left Valente second-guessing whether to continue BOGO Tuesdays—a national promotion that she continued voluntarily five years ago because New Canaanites seemed to like it.