Cup O' Joe #1: Biggby

I found a listing of the 10 largest coffee chains in the US dated from 2006. It listed Starbucks as having 8,000 locations, and the next chain on the list had 322*. I'm sure no one's caught up with Starbucks in three years, but I thought I'd surf around and see how everyone is using the web.

First up this week is Biggby coffee. It's a much smaller chain, but they're working the web hard, and I found some interesting ideas.

Holy crazy background. Someone stick a wallet in the AD's mouth please. Thankfully you can select a different one..you know, in case you want to hang out here for awhile. But if you click past the wackiness and click on the smiling suit in the upper left you're taken to:

Yes, the B-Happy Lounge. Here you'll find their links to Facebook, Twitter (and recent Twits), YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn.

There are some interesting uses of the channels here. The first one is a Submit a Photo. You can submit a photo of you and your Biggby coffee cup, or just your cup somewhere in the world. With a chance to win a free coffee (personally..give em all free coffees!). The pics are up on their Flickr page.

Over 300 images, and after poking around I can say that the majority are people and their cups. Can't be positive that they're all from this contest, but cool nonetheless.

Another nugget is that their CEO, unsurprisingly named Bob, is traveling to each of their 96 locations and blogging about each visit.

Using blogspot no less. 46 followers, which isn't too bad, but 1185 on his Twitter. Judging by some of the comments, the employees are participating quite a bit in this as well.

On YouTube they have videos of Bob interviewing employees at the various locations.

So Biggby is not only working on opening a lot of locations, they're also using Social Media really well. Building and strengthening a community of employees and fans as they go.

/.caffienechatter.\

*reminds me of a Bill Hicks joke about Iraq having the third largest army in the world.