It's Not About the Burrito; Or, How a Son, a Town & Social Media Saved a Bookstore

Here's a true story in which a bookseller faces the possibility of losing her business, her predicament is made uncomfortably public on her son's blog without her permission, and, though initially mortified, she decides to accept his gift in the spirit that it was given. The son's heartfelt appeal to help his mother goes viral, and the bookstore enjoys record sales ever since.

Last fall, Portland, Oregon's Broadway Books, owned by Roberta Dyer and Sally McPherson, was hit hard by the faltering economy. "In October, our business crashed just like everyone else's," said Dyer. "Not worse than anybody else, but we are such a small store. We had such a big drop that it scared me." The booksellers were concerned that they would have to close the 17-year-old, 2,000-square-foot store after the 2008 holiday season.

When word got back to Dyer's son, Aaron Durand, who lives in San Francisco, he decided to do everything he could to help. Durand launched his own social media blitz, appealing to friends and family via his blog, Everyday Dude, and his Facebook and Twitter accounts.

"So, here's the deal," Durand announced on his blog last year. "I'll be in Portland to visit January 15 - 19, 2009.... Meet me at Cha Cha Cha on SE Hawthorne in Portland on Friday, January 16, at 6:00 p.m. with a receipt from Broadway Books for over $50 and between today's date and Christmas, and I'm buying your kind ass a burrito. I've got about a grand left on my one credit card -- told you I was a simpleton -- which equates to roughly 166 of you spending at least 50 bucks a pop. That means an additional $8,333 of revenue for a deserving staff at Broadway Books."

Initially, Dyer wasn't overjoyed to have store's financial troubles made public. "He didn't ask me or tell me, and if he had I would have said don't do it," she told BTW. "I know it's an old-school thought, but it was embarrassing to me that people would know the business wasn't doing well. But I decided that I had to accept the gift in the spirit that it was given to me."

Normally, said Dyer, her son's blog would get about a 100 hits a month, and half of them were probably hers. The day that he blogged about Broadway Books, he got 300. "He thought that when he blogged about the store, a dozen of his best friends would read it, and that would be it. But people linked to his blog from theirs, they re-tweeted it, and Facebooked it. It went viral from there. It got sent to whole departments at major employers in town like Nike, Adidas, an ad agency. It got sent to people in church groups, reading groups, a soup group."

And then she began seeing the effects of what he'd done. "It started with his peer group -- the tattooed hipsters. Then they told their friends and parents, and everyone started coming in," said Dyer. "There were hundred of customers that I would not have seen otherwise. We were on the news. I had calls from all of the country. We made tens of thousands of dollars. Despite the worst snowstorm we've seen, we ended up with the best December we'd ever had." (Some had cross-country skied to get to the store.)

The effects didn't stop with the bookstore's record-breaking holiday season. "We ended up with the best January and February we've ever had," she said. And, "since December, almost every single month has been significantly ahead of last year."

In January, when it was time for Burrito Day, the local news showed up to cover the crowds. Aaron arranged to have burritos made in advance. But not that many people showed up. "We were kind of disappointed," said Dyer. "But then we realized people weren't doing it for the burritos -- which really was the best possible thing. Many people who did show up bought their own burrito. Some shoved money into Aaron's pants like he was a stripper to help pay for everything."

Aaron then took the extra burritos to the local rescue mission. "He said he was king for a day," said Dyer.

"The best part of the story for me, as the mother of this fabulous child, was that he was promoted," she said. "He works at Birkenstock, and the story had gotten back to the CEO. He said how he followed this story that touched so many people and that he wanted to promote Aaron to the marketing department. Now he writes a daily blog at Birkenstock."

Dyer said she was struck by the power of Twitter and other social media platforms. "This was what was so counterintuitive to me. You can do something on Twitter or Facebook that's intensely local. It absolutely does affect local business. It can change the game." --Karen Schechner