Palcohol and Big Gulp

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Mark Phillips.jpgTwo shake-your-head stories in the nooz today, and neither one gives you much hope for humanity.

On the product development front, something called Palcohol, which purports to be alcohol in powdered form. One packet equals one drink. Various flavors (Lemondrop, Cosmopolitan, Margarita, etc.). Imagine your next camping trip! Football games! The alarmists are at it as well, "Think of the children!!"

The supposed inventor of this powder is Mark Phillips, a TV entertainer whose book is called "Swallow This."

Think of the physics, people. Alcohol is 40 proof ethanol, which is a liquid. There's no such thing as "solid" alcohol. It's a hoax. A pretty good one, because who doesn't want to carry around an emergency ration of booze, but a hoax nonetheless.

4/22 UPDATE: "Regulatory approvals for Palcohol are withdrawn." Now we'll never know.

On the Big Gulp front: A customer spent $400 on dinner at Art of the Table but brought along her own soft drinks, purchased (at a server's suggestion) from a nearby Seven-11. Afterwards (afterwards!) the chef complained on Facebook about the Big Gulp cups on the table.

So here's a thought: If you don't like the idea of customers bringing Big Gulps cups into your restaurant, why not just serve Cokes yourself? What about "Just say no" when the customers ask if they can bring their own soft drinks? No need to escalate the issue to a DefCon Three (Yelp-FB-Twitter) confrontation.

We have separate issues here. One: should a customer be allowed to bring outside food or drink into a restaurant. My answer is no, except for special bottles of wine (and expect to be charged "corkage") or dessert for a celebration (and pay "cakeage"). Two: should servers have suggested a way around the good-sense ban? No. Three: should restaurant owners be dicks and criticize their customers on social media? Never, unless they want to be held up as dicks & douches for all to see.

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This page contains a single entry by Cornichon published on April 21, 2014 5:00 PM.

Radici's Journey from "Pantry" to "Roots" was the previous entry in this blog.

Salon of Decorative Arts comes to Seattle next week is the next entry in this blog.

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