Today, Applebee’s launches its latest promo, which you can enjoy if you’re lucky enough to live in the chosen zip codes. The chain is now offering $1 Long Island Iced Teas through the end of the year AT SELECT LOCATIONS only, and Manhattan and Brooklyn did not make the cut.
For the month of December, you can get “Dollar L.I.T.” in Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, actual Long Island (I mean it would be quite the oversight if denizens of the drink’s alleged birthplace were snubbed), New Jersey, and beyond, but, for reasons unknown, not in BK or Manhattan.
Despite branding itself America’s “neighborhood bar and grill,” AB’s thinks it’s OK to skip over entire boroughs. This happened in October, too, when we were denied $1 margaritas (dubbed Dollaritas).
Why don’t the good people of Manhattan and Brooklyn deserve to get dollar lit? What did we do to get put on Applebee’s pay-no-mind list?
I pass my neighborhood Applebee’s, the one on Fulton St. in Brooklyn next to Restoration Plaza, every day on my walk home from the train. I gaze longingly through the windows and see a joyous, bustling clientele. Often, I consider going in, but usually I’m grumpy and alone and I talk myself out of it. But hey, you know what would definitely get me in the door?
I don’t know if I even like Long Island Iced Teas, but that’s not the point. It’s the principle of the thing!
What makes even less sense about this arbitrary, extremely malign neglect, is that the casual dining establishment isn’t doing too hot. After a 6.2 percent dip in earnings, its parent company DineEquity, inc. announced that Applebee’s would be shuttering up to 135 locations by the end of 2017. With this (desperate) promo of liquid poison for a buck, it would appear that Applebee’s is pulling out all the stops. But not all the stops!
I used to drink Long Island Iced Teas in college on Thursday nights, when they were offered for $4 at our town bar. (We dubbed that weeknight “Blackout Thursdays.”) Just think, I could blackout every night of the week, and safely stumble home, until the end of the year for a quarter of the price! But Applebee’s won’t let me.
I’m just a girl, standing in front of a brand, asking it to get me crunk for cheap. Let’s give this holiday rom-com a happy ending, already.
We reached out to a representative from Applebee’s but didn’t hear back at the time of publication.
