(Personal message from Ben…store owner guy):
I had an epiphany last week.
While watching an ad for Target, showing people trying to sneak out of Thanksgiving dinner early to get to their sale, something in me just snapped. I realized last thing in the world I wanted was for people to leave each other on one of the few days they have together as families just to go off shopping. Sure I want the business, but not at that cost, (particularly when the biggest point of what we do is to help provide excuses for people to have fun together).
Therefore, I’ve decided to do things different for the rest of the season:
- We will have special hours during some of the school days and late in some evenings that are special times for parents to come in and pick up gifts without the kids in tow, and without huge crowds. (During the morning times, we’ll provide parents with a free cup of coffee or tea, and a little kid to parent translation on what would make the kids extra happy and keep their brains getting stronger)
- Play it Forward! From now until Xmas eve, every gift purchase over $25 will come with a Mystery gift (value over $5–the bigger the purchase, the bigger the gift) that you get to decide which folks in need of some smiles it gets to go to. The games we have are great since the older kids are often left out in these types of toy drives under an avalanche of stuffed bears and equivalent. The charities will include:
- Toys for Tots (through the local Fire Fighters)
- Midway Shelter
- Children’s Hospital in Oakland
- ???? (come talk to us if you have a great group that you think would benefit from some games)
BTW…if you want to just buy stuff for donation, we will do what we did last year, buy two and we will match with a third.
We are going to be adding reviews and recommendations to the site every day from now on. We’ve also started using our twitter account to do to things, say what is going on live at the store, and feature either cool new stuff we just got in, or good quick sales we are having. Feel free to subscribe if that sounds like fun.