Perky Cups is a business that just can’t escape controversy. I mean, it is a bikini coffee shop, featuring women in bikinis slinging java to waiting customers, so it is going to provoke ire in certain circles, no matter what it does. (Well, unless it goes out of business.) However, the shop is in trouble again. Months after courting controversy with a bikini barista banner, they’re now in trouble for sending bikini-clad saleswomen out into the streets to lure in customers.
What I’d call good salesmanship, Aurora, Colorado, councilwoman Molly Markert calls a crime waiting to happen. Claiming that the bikini coffee girls risk getting “raped and murdered,” she circulated a petition and then sent a formal letter of complaint, not to Perky Cups owner Jason Bernal, but to the shopping center where he rents space, where she and 30 others promised a boycott of the entire complex until Perky Cups changes its ways. For his part, Bernal says Councilwoman Markert went way overboard and says that his sales force is in no danger.
I think these two should just sit down and work out their differences. Over a hot beverage, perhaps? After all, nothing tastes better than coffee you didn’t have to make yourself.
Image: Sneak A Peek Coffee by ifixfones1
Tags: bikini coffee shop causes boycott, unusual marketing campaigns, marketing tactics, coffee shop sends bikini-clad women to sell coffee, Perky Cups, Aurora, Colorado, controversial marketing, Molly Markert, Jason Bernal
