Dunkin’ opened in Soddy Daisy on Tuesday, October 10th, at 5:00 a.m. They hosted a promotional event where they said “Free coffee for a year for the first 100 people in line!” It was hosted as a drive-thru event that backed up the Walmart parking lot. People started lining up around 6:00 pm Monday evening to start their eleven-hour overnight journey.
Many students from Soddy Daisy High School and surrounding schools attended the grand opening. They had corn hole boards, football, spike ball, and many more activities to keep themselves busy. This kind of event is rare for the Soddy Daisy community, so it was pretty exciting for all attending.
Walmart closed at 11:00 pm that night so there were no bathrooms available to the public. Many crossed Dayton Pike to get food at Taco Bell due to them being open at late hours.
As 4:30 a.m. approached, cars turned back on and people got ready to get their free coffee. To their surprise, a lady, who seemed to be the manager of this particular location, came down the drive-thru line to hand out samples of a pumpkin spice cold brew with no mention of the free coffee. So, when questioned she said that the first 100 had already been given out to the participants.
However, only the first 20 or 30 cars got free coffee coupons. Those coupons were for four free iced/hot black coffees a month. Many participants were upset by this for a multitude of reasons.
The first one is that the deal is nowhere close to how they advertised it to promote the event. Secondly, a few of the first cars had nearly eight people per car, meaning most of the passes were already gone by the 30th car in line. The third reason is that the manager of Dunkin’ never mentioned that the first 100 coupons were gone before 4:30 a.m., which left people in false hopes of free coffee while also wasting their time.
Participant Zoe Keener stated “We were about the 49th car… The Dunkin’ worker comes up to us with free samples and starts to walk away when I ask her the process on how to obtain the ‘Free Coffee for a Year’ pass when we get to the speaker. She let us know they did not limit passes (per car) and the first 100 were given out about an hour ago (at 4 am)… She was not telling cars they were still going to wait for a couple of hours to get up to the speaker to not get a free pass.”
Other people went to social media to air their frustration on the situation. Things started were “I would message corporate to be honest…” and “We were 64th in line, they gave them away a long time ago…”
Since then, Dunkin’s business at this particular location has been booming regardless of the mistakes they previously made.
