Von Maur is a family owned Midwest based retailer that reminds me of Nordstroms (but not quite as “upscale.”)

Founded in Davenport, Iowa in 1872, they have 22 locations mainly in Midwest states (Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky, Kansas and Nebraska).

Like Nordstrom, they have live piano music in their stores (although Nordstrom has now apparently ended that tradition because they said their customers thought it was “old-fashioned.”) They have a great shoe department with shoes you normally don’t see in other department stores. And they are well-known for their customer service.

I encountered this first hand over the weekend.

I went to the Von Maur in the Yorktown Mall in Lombard, a western suburb of Chicago. I was hunting for after Christmas bargains at the Carson’s in the same mall (Carson’s is a department store in the same vein as Macys). I went to Von Maur to check out their boots - to see if anything had gone on sale yet. Von Maur doesn’t have the crazy “door busters” and other sales like the big retail chains.

Lo and behold, some of their boots were marked down. Even the ritzier brands.

A pair of black dress boots I had been eying for months was now on sale so I told the salesman my size and waited. When he emerged with my boots, alas, he didn’t have my size. But they ran “small” and so I tried on the boot that was a half size bigger.

But I knew they weren’t right immediately. They were too big.

Then the salesman offered: “I can check our other stores and see if someone else has them in your size.”

“Great,” I replied.

These boots rarely went on sale so I thought what the heck. I wasn’t too hopeful though.

But lo and behold- ONE store had ONE pair of them left (out of 22 stores.) The salesman called the store to have a salesman there go into the shoe “back room” and make sure they were really there (as sometimes the computer inventory isn’t correct.) But they were!

One pair of the boots in my size remained.

“We can ship them to you from this store,” the salesman offered. “Free of charge.”

Free of charge???

“UPS Ground. You should have them within a week.”

It was a no-brainer! I took the phone from the salesman and told the salesman at the other store who had the boots my address and gave him my credit card number. That was that.

And then I waited.

They had told me it would take a week.

But no.

Within 3 days the boots were sitting in my building mailroom. Only THREE days!

All FREE OF CHARGE.

What great service. Who does that these days? I will be shopping at Von Maur again. You can count on it.

Von Maur is apparently looking at expansion possibilities on Chicago’s Mag Mile or State Street (as they have 6 stores in Illinois, but none within Chicago.) I welcome them to the City with open arms.

Imagine it. You get up in the morning and every day you eat at the same place. Only it’s not your kitchen table or your granite covered breakfast bar.

No.

It’s McDonald’s.

Think I’m kidding?

I saw a statistic that fully 20% of all breakfast eaten every day in America is at McDonald’s.

And they’re not eating apples and sipping the orange juice. McDonalds started selling the “McSkillet Burrito” nationwide at the end of November. Its stats:

The $2.49 tortilla is folded over a filling of scrambled eggs, a sausage patty, potatoes, roasted peppers, onions, cheese and red salsa, the company said.

It contains 610 calories, 1,390 grams of sodium and 36 grams of fat, including 14 grams of saturated fat and 0.5 grams of trans fat, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

And how many people are eating more than one of these? And what happens when you add on the hash browns too?

Breakfast is huge business for McDonalds. From the UPI:

“Breakfast all day is certainly something we’ll always take under consideration, but I can fairly tell you it’s not something that is going to happen for a long time,” McDonald’s USA Chief Operating Officer Jan Fields said in a webcast news conference.

Breakfast accounts for 24 percent of McDonald’s Corp.’s U.S. sales and 28 percent of transactions, she said.

Soon, you’ll be able to have your deluxe big breakfast all day long. How great would that be? Admit it. You’ve driven into McDonald’s on a weekend morning at 10:55 am only to discover that they have stopped serving the breakfast and you have to order lunch. How annoying! When what you were really craving was the sausage patty and those pancakes. All day breakfast would be nirvana.

Some people can’t get enough and eat at McDonald’s every single day. You think I’m kidding? From the Wall Street Journal:

Angel Crawford, a 49-year-old Chicago resident, said she visits McDonald’s every day for breakfast and other meals, but has been staying away from the higher-priced items on the Dollar Menu & More section. “I don’t buy them because they went up,” she said.

For once, I just don’t know what to say.

And I thought Starbucks was so addictive that people would continue to order their lattes regardless of price. Apparently McDonald’s is also nearly recession proof.

Have you ever gotten a Chia Pet as a gift?

I’m betting the answer is “yes.”

And who doesn’t know their famous jingle? You can watch the original 1980s commerical with the jingle on YouTube here. It’s brilliant branding and marketing.

But there is more than just fun and games to Chia. Chia Pets and Chia Heads are owned by a company called Joseph Enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is some history you may not be aware of:

First Chia Pet: The ram, first marketed in 1982.

Chias and the Holidays: According to the company’s website, they are sold only during the holiday season because: “Chia Pets and Chia Heads are handmade pottery items. It takes an entire year to produce enough Pets and Heads for one holiday season.”

Joseph Enterprises also markets the other great holiday item: The Clapper.

This year, you can also buy the Chia Herb garden and the Chia Catgrass- where the cat eats the grass. Their website says it provides “essential vitamins and folic acid” and “aids in digestion”. An added bonus: it also freshens kitty breath!

Don’t laugh about the Chia Herb Garden. It is mentioned on numerous gardening websites as an easy way to grow your own herbs and you can grow them all winter. The seeds are organic.

I’ve never gotten a Chia Pet myself. But if I did, I think I’d just have to grow it to see if it really does work.

Come on, admit it. You’ve gotten a Chia before. Question is, did you grow it?

Starbucks is about to advertise on tv for the first time in its history. That’s kind of stunning considering they went public as a company over 15 years ago. That’s how good the word of mouth and other free advertising has been for them (movies, books etc.)

But now that Starbucks is about to enter into the world of advertising, I would like to throw my two cents in as to what they should be putting into the commercials. I’m no professional, but I ama Starbucks consumer.

My “Expert” Advice

Starbucks is all about community. Make me all warm and fuzzy. Many people have married people they have met in Starbucks: some met on a blind date, some met just by typing on their laptops at a corner table by the window, some met by sipping a drink in one of the lounge chairs and engaging in conversation, some met by studying with a college classmate. The stories are endless.

Hold a contest for people to tell you how they met the person of their dreams at Starbucks. I remember a few years ago, in the Vows section of the New York Times (the section that talks about how couples meet) there was a story of a woman in Manhattan who had gone to a local Starbucks in her neighborhood to write out some holiday Thank You cards. While sitting at a table writing out the cards, a man sat down at a table nearby and they struck up a conversation. They had a lot in common and ended up talking for hours. They, of course, later got married.

Aw….

Why are you different than Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks? Because people meet the love of their lives in your stores.

Work Stories Are Warm and Fuzzy Too

Or what about the people who are legitimately working at a Starbucks everyday? And I’m not talking about the Starbucks employees. There are people who are blogging and making a living doing it. Didn’t Perez Hilton, one of the celebrity bloggers, blog at a Starbucks in Hollywood for months before hitting the big time? (or maybe that was another coffee shop.) Perhaps he would want some payment to appear in an ad. But others wouldn’t.

There are many success stories. People who have gotten a dream job because of an interview at Starbucks. People who have written best selling novels while sitting at Starbucks.

They’re not doing any of those things at the local McDonalds.

Yes, it’s about the coffee. But it’s also about the feeling I get when I think of Starbucks. I want to feel connected to my community. Coffee, working on my laptop, meeting the love of my life. Those are the Starbucks experiences.

That’s what I want to see in the first Starbucks commercial.

But that’s just me.

Starbucks, are you listening???