------ Forwarded Message From: John Wharton <wharton at shasta.Stanford.EDU> <...> ===
There's this funky little restaurant in downtown Palo Alto known as "The Creamery", an authentic 1950s-style soda-fountain and burger joint. (Official name: The Penninsula Fountain and Grill.) I'm sure you've been there.
On the menu they list half a page of hamburger combination plates, with fries, chili, etc., most in the $5.00 to $7.00 range. At the bottom they list a "Bubbly Burger" that sells for $150.75. The price looks like a typo, until you read the footnote: The "Bubbly Burger" is served with a free bottle of chilled Dom Perignon champagne! :-)
(That's actually something of a bargain: the retail price for 'Dom' can be $120 or more per bottle.)
I always took this to be a gag, until now. While stopping in for lunch there today, I saw a couple of large tables had been pushed together to provide seating for 14 earnest-looking young men, most in crisp white tee shirts, jeans, and tennis shoes, all munching on burgers and fries. In itself, not that uncommon a sight in Silicon Valley...
Then I noticed their tee shirts had various PayPal slogans on the backs, and several were wearing hooded warm-up jackets bearing PayPal logos. The PayPal IPO, you may recall, had been planned for last week, but was postponed by some sort of litigation threat and rescheduled for today.
It slowly dawned on me that, rather than having Cokes and shakes with their burgers, the men at the PayPal tables were drinking tall glasses of champagne, and several bottles of Dom Perignon were scattered around the tables. (I counted at least six or eight.) Bubbly burgers for all!
I stopped to chat briefly; Yes, these were PayPoint employees; Yes, the IPO had gone through, and they were out celebrating. ("A significant milestone", as one lad described it.) And how better to celebrate -- and how typically Silicon Valley! -- than for these newly-minted young entrepreneurs to grab a quick burger at their favorite greasy spoon???
Friday-afternoon beer busts are a tradition in The Valley, but I was quite amused to think that -- just for this once -- these folks had replaced the pitchers of beer with bottles of the best French bubbly!
--John Wharton
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