Picture from Derby Telegraph
Almost as if to prove my point about the declining quality of local newspapers, this week the Nottingham Post and their collection of chimpanzees with typewriters have been full of stories about the fact that a branch of Wimpy is closing down. Admittedly this is moderately newsworthy as the branch at Nottingham's ghost of a shopping mall that is the Broadmarsh Centre has been there since 1975 making it the longest serving outlet in the place in Broadmarsh, especially poignant because these days a restaurant only stays open for a matter of months before the keys get handed back to the landlord. In this era of environmental awareness I am surprised that Wimpy didn't make more out of the fact that they served food on plates and drinks in cups and glasses rather than in cardboard receptacles. There's only a handful of these outlets in the UK these days, which is a shame given that Nottingham city centre has three McDonalds and two Burger Kings. I admit I do like Burger King's food when I am in the mood for that kind of thing, although I haven't been into a McDonalds since they turned the ordering system into that of Argos.
This whole episode seems to smell of a concept I have written about before, negative marketing (the promotion of something so ubiquitous that it doesn't really need promoting). Apart from the fact that the Nottingham Post has wrung at least a week's worth of material out of this closure, it was interesting to see on Twitter that the place was packed out yesterday, the final day of trading. Most of these love letters came from people who had not darkened their doors in years and had popped in for one last look. Whoever came up with this whole escapade is nothing short of a genius because they have managed to get bums on seats in Wimpy, the name all over social media and a shit load of free publicity in the local paper. Obviously it doesn't take a lot to excite the Nottingham Post into creating content, unless I'm involved, but even so this has all been free publicity.
Here's the big twist though, Wimpy hasn't vanished for good. It will be back in Broadmarsh once the revamping work has been done, okay so that could be a million years from now but everyone seems to have downplayed the fact that Wimpy were merely saying au revoir rather than goodbye.
I imagine that not one person who nostalgically ate there yesterday will be seen anywhere near the place when it returns.
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