Corporate decisions take us down Rocky Road
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, May 20, 2004

I ate an ice cream cone for breakfast this morning.

I hadn't planned to.I didn't wake up, deny my 2-year-old's request for pizza - That's not a breakfast food, honey, here eat this waffle with maple syrup - all the while knowing that heh, heh, heh, Mommy herself would be getting a scoop right after she dropped him off at preschool.

I blame the evil genius who thought of making Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins roommates throughout the Northeast. And in Kenmore Square.

I got in the coffee line - security footage will back me up - but it was kind of . . . slow, which gave me, or rather my id, time to get an idea:

Wouldn't you rather have a cone?

Coffee's for suckers, I thought, breaking for the wide-open ice cream counter.

For a moment I worried the tubs might be covered with netting, the way wine and beer used to be on Sundays, only to be unveiled at a more seemly hour for consuming ice cream.

But a scooperista hustled right over.

Hmmm, which flavor to go for? Mint Chip (in the Crest family), Jamoca Almond Fudge (almost like a cup of coffee itself), Strawberry (I'd get in a serving of fruit)?

The Rocky Road and the Cookie Dough were calling me.

I know what you're thinking: Why not ask for a taste of each?

Please. Everyone knows there's something crass,almost wanton, about TASTING before 10 a.m. It marks you as a person who knows no shame.

I looked around to make sure I wasn't being tailed. Washing down a cream-filled doughnut with a caramel swirl latte is one thing, but get snagged eating a kids scoop of ice cream and people will talk.

(Unless the ice cream is part of a new diet - perhaps the Revere Beach Ice Cream Diet - and then they won't sneer. They'll jump on the bandwagon.)

And yet, wasn't I a victim here? An innocent lured into the bait- and-switch pulled by the Randolph, Mass.-based Allied DomecqQuick Service Restaurants?

A while back a corporate decision was made to develop, in industry parlance, "multibranded locations."

The idea, as reported by Nation's Restaurant News, was to "cater to a complementary daypart concept - breakfast and between-meal snacks with Dunkin' Donuts and DESSERT with Baskin-Robbins." (Italics mine - added to show annoyance.)

As if they didn't know what would happen.

"Can I get you anything else?" the worker asked as she rang up my Rocky Road cone.

How about a brown paper bag?