Margie’s Meatloaf Mecca is the talk of Athens, Ohio. The restaurant serves only meatloaf and strawberry milk. On the restaurant's website, proprietor Margie Pandora boasts of three kinds of meatloaf ("moist, dry and drier") and strawberry milk that uses a half cup of strawberry powder for each glass. A billboard in Athens says the restaurant is "coming soon," but the sign has been up since October, and there is no restaurant at the address. And there never will be.
OU alumni John Sammon and Steve Dimatteo are the geniuses behind this enormous prank. According to Sammon, his friend, Margie Pandora, got married in December, and he decided he wanted to surprise her when she came to her bachelor party in Athens.
“I do marketing, and a couple of my other friends who were in on this are in marketing as well,” Sammon said, adding he is now an owner of an advertising agency. “So we basically created a fake business and put up a billboard to kind of just have some fun with her ahead of the wedding because she’s our good friend.”
Sammon and Dimatteo worked together to come up with the most ridiculous business they could think of, and they decided on Margie’s Meatloaf Mecca, a restaurant that only sells ‘moist,’ ‘dry,’ and ‘drier’ meatloaf alongside strawberry milk.
“Because it’s in Athens, it’s like … it’s gotta be fake, but there’s also an element to it where it could be real, so that’s the fun of all of it,” Sammon said.
The pranksters only paid for one month of billboard space, but the advertising company sees no reason to take it down ...until they are completely out of inventory, we suppose. It certainly draws attention, and the website draws traffic. You can even buy merchandise with Margie’s Meatloaf Mecca on it, including face masks. Read the story of Athens' totally fictional restaurant at The Post. -via Metafilter