In case you live under a rock or hate Gilmore Girls, you have probably seen "Luke's" take over some corners of social media in the past 24 hours.
Some brilliant marketing genius over at Netflix had an idea: to celebrate GG turning 16 (but really, to promote the fact that it's coming back to Netflix in November), why not turn hundreds of coffee shops around the country into a Luke's?
My friend Mary Frances and I decided we needed to take advantage of this momentous and singular opportunity to pretend we were actual Gilmore girls. Fall in Asheville has started to kick in, so amongst the blustery, blowing leaves, we sought out a participating coffee shop (Biltmore Coffee Roasters) and started to get VERY EXCITED.
Each participating business was sent a box of swag from Netflix to give customers the Stars Hollow experience. They got a sign for the front door (pictured above), signage for inside (pictured below), hats and aprons for the employees, a special blend of coffee, and Gilmore Girls cups and coffee sleeves.
The line at the shop was out the door, but it wasn't anything compared to more urban locations - I heard that lines were two hours long in some cities. We had to wait, but only a few minutes. However, the free first 250 cups of coffee were long gone by then - our barista (let's call her Luke) told us that they gave away those first cups in less than an hour.
(That red thing is an arrow pointing to the "No cell phones" sign, not the number "47." Although this morning it took me about 5 minutes to figure out why I'd written what I thought was "47" across this picture. Penmanship is important, folks.)
We stepped up and got our coffee, Luke's Blend (obviously) and then entered the drawing for a Luke's hat and apron.
It was seriously kind of magical. Everybody in there, for the most part, was a Gilmore Girls fan and was equally as excited as we were. There was a woman behind us in line who I was positive was judging the hell out of us for being so giggly and excited, but when she stepped up to order, she actually stopped the barista and had her pose with the coffee cup for an Instagram picture. EVERYONE was about it.
We sat outside, sipped coffee, discussed whether we'd want to be Rory or Lorelai (Fran picked Lor, I picked Rory -- we go together well!), and settled on the fact that Logan is definitively the best choice (read more about that hot take opinion here).
Once we removed the sleeves of our coffee cups, we saw that there was a secret Snapchat code on the cups! It unlocked this adorable lil' Luke's filter that I used to take the photo below.
All in all, it was just perfect. So happy that Fran found this place and that we got to have this real-deal Stars Hollow moment. To top it off, yesterday Netflix released a new featurette for the show.
Like I said, marketing geniuses.
