This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Paden Ferguson, CEO of Padiano’s Kitchen. It has been edited for length and clarity.
In October, I saw online that Starbucks was launching its new holiday drinks and desserts, alongside a little holiday bear cup featuring a green beanie hat and straw.
For the next month, my partner and I talked about how we were going to get the bear cup the day it came out on November 6th. But we thought it would be easy, just walking into the shop at noon on the launch day.
We began to notice that other people had made the same plan. All over social media, the cups were going viral. Everyone was nuts about this bear.
We mapped Starbucks near us
As the release day drew closer, we decided to find out how many of the cups our local Starbucks would be selling, just to prepare for what the local competition might be like. On the evening of the 5th, we mapped out our five local Starbucks stores and visited the busiest one to estimate the number of cups they’d sell.
We asked the barista how many they had — seven, they said. The same barista told us that not all the Starbucks would have the cups, and for the ones that did, each would have a different number to sell. He said the Starbucks closest to our house would have between one and seven bears.
The urgency was on. We’d been thinking about these cups for a month, and we knew we had to get them.
Still awake at midnight, we decided there was only one option — we’d have to camp out to get one. When I asked her if we were doing it, she said, “We don’t have any other choice.”
The thought of camping out excited us. We hadn’t done anything like that for over a decade.
We camped outside the store
At 12:30 a.m., we were rummaging through our garage looking for camping chairs, a tent, and blankets — anything we could use for a makeshift camping kit.
We double-checked to see if Tulsa had a curfew. It does, but only for minors, which we definitely are not.
At 1 a.m., we parked outside Starbucks, and since no one was there, we stayed in the warmth of the car. I watched a little “Love Island,” also keeping watch, while my partner slept.
At 1:45 a.m., another car pulled up. Game time, I thought to myself. I woke up my partner, and we quickly got our chairs and blankets out to sit by the door. A little after 2 a.m., another person showed up. And near the end, there were nine of us altogether. We were all talking, trying to look through the window to see if we could see how many cups there were.
The Starbucks we were at only had 2 Bearista cups
When the employees arrived a little after 4 a.m. to open at 4:30, they looked at us like we were crazy. We all watched through the glass as they pulled out the bears — only two of them. Only two!
Maybe they had more in the back, we all thought.
Three people left, saying they’d try another store. One person said he had planned to buy all the cups he could get and resell them.
When the barista unlocked the doors, they announced that there were only two cups to sell.
The other people in line were miffed, too, but the lady directly behind us told us she was happy for us — that we deserved it for being there the longest.
As soon as they let us in, my partner and I quickly went to the only two bear cups, each costing $30, on the shelves, grabbing some cake pops and Christmas drinks too.
I felt a little bit guilty
I did feel a bit guilty about getting the only two, but we had waited all night and were the first two in line.
By 5 a.m., we were home, feeling incredibly successful. It was such a spontaneous, silly, fun thing to do. Something we don’t get to do much anymore as adults. It felt like we were teenagers again.
When we woke at 11 a.m., we saw horror stories all over TikTok of people who had camped out hours before us, only to go home empty-handed. We got really lucky.
Around noon, we stopped off at the Starbucks we’d only been camping at hours before. They had sold out of every single Christmas item they had. It was all gone.
It was definitely consumerism, but it was fun.
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