Fortune Cookies In Bookstores

A radical million dollar idea! Available here for free!

It was a little over a decade ago that I had a brilliant million dollar idea. Sadly, the idea came to me a few years after I had closed my bookstore. It was a brilliant million dollar bookstore idea. I wonder how different things may have been if I had come up with this brilliant million dollar idea way back when I was running the bookstore.

Imagine yourself, if you will, walking down the sidewalk of some cool, chic, hot small-town downtown. It’s one of those artsy-fartsy towns. It is a place where you are vacationing.

Abruptly, you stop walking. You look up into the sky but nothing out of the ordinary is happening up there. You look at the street and see nothing but clogged traffic. Then you look to your left and you suddenly realize that you are standing in front of a bookstore. How did your body know to stop walking right in front of that bookstore? Is the body faster than the noggin?

Anyway, you trust your instincts and you go into the bookstore. You are greeted by the divine smell of books and a few other unidentifiable smells. You browse the store and you feel really great vibes from the bookstore. Of course you get those vibes every time you go in a bookstore so it might be you instead of the bookstore.

Seriously, every journey into a bookstore is a heavenly journey, but what would happen if, after you’ve paid for the books you are buying, the cashier then holds out a plate of fortune cookies, saying, “Please have a fortune cookie.”

You would be a little freaked out, right? You would never in a billion years expect to be given a fortune cookie in a bookstore. You would never in a billion years expect to be given a fortune cookie anywhere outside of a Chinese restaurant. Seriously, how many bookstores have you been in that give you a fortune cookie with every purchase?

If you got a fortune cookie with every purchase at that bookstore you would remember that bookstore for the rest of your life, right?. Why? Because it is most likely the only bookstore in the entire world that offers fortune cookies with ever purchase. Who could forget a bookstore that handed out fortune cookies?

And everyone loves fortune cookies, right? It’s like some free bonus divination. And who does not like divination? We all like that simple sentence of answers to our questions. It does not matter how the cookie happened to know.

For a lot of people a simple sentence of inspiration can seriously tweak the noggin loops going on. It can be affirming and instigating. A cookie can make you feel good. A cookie can change your day.

If you own a bookstore, would you not want a bookstore that everyone who enters remembers for the rest of their lives? Would you not want to be different than every other freaking bookstore?

Fortune cookies are the answer. That is my million dollar idea. Offer fortune cookies!

Be different.

Break convention.

Freak people out.

I hereby offer this multi-million dollar idea for free to anyone reading this. Try it. I dare you. Dare this to make you and your business ridiculously wealthy — or at least memorable. (And if anyone does strike it rich with this idea a 15% gratuity would be profoundly appreciated.)

This idea is not just for bookstores. Imagine making a deposit at your bank and then being offered a fortune cookie afterwards. Would that change your entire concept of banking? Imagine walking into an auto dealership and buying a new forty thousand dollar car. You go through all the paperwork and you sign the papers and suddenly the car is yours. And then the auto dealer hands you a small sterling silver plate with one solitary fortune cookie upon it.

How much does that little itty-bitty cookie change the experience?

How would you feel going to a local business and being offered a fortune cookie? Certainly it would tweak your perception of reality, no?

Be one of the first places not involved in Chinese food to offer fortune cookies. Break and go beyond social convention. Be different. Make someone’s day. Break cultural barriers. If you are the proprietor of a Chinese restaurant you might consider offering sopapillas. Offer the unexpected.

And it is the unexpected that we must be open to in order to get a good fortune.

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