Two Milwaukee coffee shops are among hundreds nationwide that will be transformed into Luke’s Diner from the popular television show “Gilmore Girls” tomorrow.
On Oct. 5, Fuel Café in Riverwest and Sherman Perk Coffee Shop in Sherman Park will change some of their décor, use Luke’s coffee mugs and provide free coffee from 7 a.m. to noon, or whenever they reach 250 free cups. Netflix is sponsoring at least some of the free coffee for each restaurant.
The cafes said they were contacted a few weeks ago by a marketing firm on behalf of Netflix to participate in the event, which pays homage to the return of the show for a mini-series on Netflix next month. Gilmore Girls ran for seven seasons on The WB and then The CW from October 2000 to May 2007.
“Some people on staff are fans of ‘Gilmore Girls’, so that helped,” said Cory Von Bohlen, manager at Fuel Café. “We do a decent amount of our own events, so it just…it sounded like it might be fun.”
Since Fuel was given the go-ahead to start telling its customers about the Luke’s Diner day last week, excitement has been building among fans of the show, which often addressed the main character’s coffee addiction.
“I anticipate we will have people waiting outside, just based on the social media response I’ve seen,” Van Bohlen said.
Sherman Perk also anticipates a larger group of customers than usual.
“We hope for a big crowd, obviously, and there’s been a lot of interest, so we expect more than usual,” said Craig Dull, an employee.
Fuel will change some of its décor for tomorrow.
“There’s branded cups and there’s some codes, some Snapchat codes on the cups,” Von Bohlen said.
Sherman Perk will not change too much about its appearance tomorrow.
“We have some décor that was provided for the promotion, but mostly not,” Dull said.
There are six Wisconsin coffee shops included in the more than 200 cafes listed as participants in tomorrow’s event at a Netflix promotional website.
