Look what we found on our doorstep!!

Mark: So last October while at the Twin Cities Marathon Expo, Kris and I made a unique acquaintance when we met Alfredo Martel, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Caribou Coffee. We are HUGE Caribou Coffee Freaks!! At the time we were looking at the merchandise at the Caribou both and we happen to be wearing our Caribou sweatshirts. Alfredo commented on our appeal and we ended up having an interesting discussion about Caribou and sports marketing, he even gave up hints about what would eventually be the sponsorship of the Minnesota Vikings and Timberwolves. During the discussion we talked about the possibility of Caribou sponsoring runners/triathletes during the 2010 season. He gave us his card and asked us to send him an email with our ideas.

After the TC5K and before heading to the Expo - All geared up in our Caribou.

With the idea of a Caribou “racing” team we wanted to demonstrate the possibilities so we decided to run the Twin Cities 10 Mile wearing our Caribou Jerseys. We received numerous cheers and “Go Caribou” all along the race course.

Running along Summit Avenue to the sound of "Go Caribou"

After our race experience as Caribou “billboards” we were very excited about the future and wrote up the email that same night, including pictures that we had taken during the race

At the Finshig line with our friend Steve

After about a week or so we sent a follow up email which was quickly replied to by Alfredo indicating that he had been very busy traveling but was still interested in the possibilities of a Caribou Race Team and put us in contact with Kelly Keston, Regional Marketing Manager. After a couple of initial emails with Kelly we did not hear anything else from the Caribou side regarding the idea.

Fast forward three months to January and us deciding to send one more follow up email. Kelly promptly replied indicating that Caribou would not be entering the racing community at this time but thanked us for the idea and offered to send us something to say Thank You!

3 Bags of Coffee, 2 Coffee mugs that we didn't have and two new water bottles

I have to say that this was very nice of Alfredo, Kelly and Caribou Coffee. They easly could have just brushed us off and ignored our email but they took the time to say "Sorry, not now, but Thank You for being a Caribou supporter." I have a feeling that "other" coffee monstrosity would never do something this nice.