Friday, June 15, 2007

Sorry!

Dear Veronica Mars Fans,

I sincerely apologize for not updating the blog with the delivery information yesterday. Near our building there is some major construction going on and while they were working, they literally cut the Internet and phone lines. That is why if you tried calling us yesterday, nothing was going through! I know MANY of you wanted information about the shipment and whether it was delivered. I apologize again I was not able to update the blog with the details.

Well, I spoke to the trucking company and the pallet was delivered yesterday at the CW office in Burbank. The pallet included all the marshmallows, many Mars bars, and all of the Snickers Almond bars. The Mars bars from separate parts of the country via UPS were also received yesterday and one smaller package will also be delivered today. SO, THEY DID GET OUR MESSAGE!

Now, we play a waiting game. I hope that either Nick or I (or both) will hear from Dawn Ostroff via e-mail or by phone regarding the final place this confectionery will end up. I included our contact information in the letter. If she is somewhat caring about our efforts, I am sure she will contact us soon and let us all know which charity / organization it will go to.

Some have asked me how much revenue we collected from the Google ads to put towards the iTunes campaign. We used a total of $15.92 out of the $16.30 we collected to purchase 8 episodes. We did very well on that campaign as well so be proud of yourselves!

I will be posting soon about our plans for this blog based on the poll votes, and some other ideas I have. News about the Veronica Mars cast and where they are headed will definitely be a large part of our blog. Keep us bookmarked and subscribe to our blog for further updates! Thanks!


P.S. I'll try to throw in some information about Indian Food as well since some of you have asked me!

Link to Mars bars at our new TheIndianFoodStore website!!

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Our last post (well maybe...)




Regardless of what you all choose, I wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you! This week has been incredible, and I will never forget it.

We're almost there!

Veronica Mars Lovers!

We're almost there! "The Bitch is Back" is already closing in on the top 10! C'mon guys! Let's do this! We can make this #1 within a few hours if we make a big push!


I will have the exact numbers of episodes purchased via our link hopefully by tomorrow. I have already e-mailed iTunes about the delay in reporting. They have yet to e-mail me back!

Thanks!


To a special fan who came by our office today: Thanks for the Snickerdoodles. The staff and I loved them! (We won't post your name for privacy reasons)

iTunes day!



Update: 4:11pm CST: Okay, there is definitely something wrong! I know you guys are purchasing it but it still shows only 4 on our commission setup page! Keep it up all, we're at #35! We have about 8 hours to get to #1. We generated $11.87 from the site, so that's gonna be put in as well! That's almost 6 extra purchases! Every bit helps!



Update 1:42pm CST: I believe something is wrong with our iTunes commission setup page. It does not seem to be updating as it is only showing that 4 orders have been placed thus far. I have placed more than 4 orders of it myself! Something is definitely wrong...will let you all know when I have some new numbers!



Good morning fans!

Today is iTunes day (you better not have forgotten!). Please click through the link in the other post below so we can use the commission we get from it to purchase more from iTunes. Gil from SaveVeronicaMars has asked me to update throughout the day. I will do that! I believe it takes a few hours for the affiiliate numbers to update, so I may be a bit behind!

Gotta get back to work (as you can imagine, I have a LOT of pending work to do!)

Thanks!

-Sachin

P.S. If you thought we did a good job these past few days, and you placed orders via our website, we would appreciate your positive feedback! Please do not mention the Veronica Mars campaign in the feedback as they might be a bit touchy about it. Thanks in advance!


Monday, June 11, 2007

Video + Final Numbers!

Veronica Mars fans!

Here is a video of one of our employees preparing the shipment. It shows a full 360 degree view of the pallet so you can see all of the flyers, decorations, etc. We did not attach the letter to Ms. Dawn Ostroff until the very end of the shipment because we still had a few fans who wanted their names added. Enjoy!



Oops, I just uploaded this to YouTube. It may take a few minutes before they process it. Sorry!

Many of you have asked me about the final numbers. Here they are!

4848 Snickers Almond Bars
2040 Mars Bars from England ( thanks to Gil who found an extra 120 in San Diego!)
510 Pounds of Marshmallows - I found an extra 72 pounds today even after Wal-Mart held some for me! YES!!!

Total weight = that's about 1400 POUNDS of confectionery! WE DID IT!

This is ON TOP OF whatever individual fans have sent by themselves. I estimate that number to be around 100-150 pounds or so. That makes it over 1500 pounds!

Our total donation rate via Paypal slowed down towards the end, but still made a very impressive number! The total came out to be $2942.56. A portion of the funds from this were used to cover the 120 bars found in San Diego. We also used $92.76 over these past four days for gasoline (going to and from Sam's all over Houston, picking up marshmallows, Kinko's back and forth, and some other short trips. We had to use a cargo van (which eats up gas!) for most of these trips since they required a load to be picked up. The most significant amount of funds were used to pay for the marshmallows, huge freight charges to the CW network (we payed extra so we could get it there in three days and not four), and flyers that we printed. The commissions were heavy, so we had to move $48.42 from the Paypal funds to pay for some of the Snickers Almond bars. I am trying to be as detailed as possible without being completely boring because some people wanted to know where the funds were going.

There is a balance profit of about $54.76 after these expenses. We were going to use these funds to purchase iTunes episodes tomorrow. However, if enough people request, we can donate this amount to the Invisible Children foundation. Or, we can split it up halfway! We also generated $5.86 from the clicking of Google ads you see on the side these past three days. I had mentioned previously that any revenue generated from the website will go towards this campaign, so this amount has been reserved for purchasing of iTunes episodes tomorrow.

As you can imagine, I am tired! I am so happy that all of this came together so fast, and we got this shipment out! At the same time, I am very sad that this campaign is over. But remember, tomorrow is another push! Many of your are depressed about the recent announcement (I was too!). But, what got me back into it was knowing that the same thing happened to Jericho as well. VERONICA MARS IS STILL NOT OFFICIALLY CANCELLED AND WE WILL PUSH UNTIL WE CAN PUSH NO LONGER! We will be the only fans to do two campaigns!

This is a long shot, but I think we all knew this from the beginning. I hate to see some people giving up and walking away even before the shipment gets there. Regardless of what happens, I know the first thing I do tomorrow will be purchasing episodes from iTunes (make sure to click on our link below before you purchase!). I hope you do the same. Good night all! Thank you for being so wonderful!

Veronica Mars - Veronica Mars, Season 3 - The Bitch Is Back

More pictures!



Close up o f




Putting flyers up on each case.



Just a random picture...


Starting to make the shipment...!


Isn't she just ...*sniff sniff*...beautiful!


Will have a video of us preparing it tonight! I'll get the pictures uploaded of the actual loading as well. Enjoy! To all those who posted comments, WHY GIVE UP NOW?

Shipment is Ready to Go!

This is the day we have all been waiting for. There is a saying that "A picture is worth a thousand words". Well, I agree!



This is an example of the flyers we attached to each case of product. Doesn't it fit and look beautiful! The big Mars box you see actually consists of 4 master cases of Mars bars inside this large master case.







These are the marshmallows when they arrived (they came on two separate pallets because we ordered two different sizes)

Will post some more in a second!

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Getting ready for the big day!

Good evening all...I realize this is a late post but I was at the office for a few hours late this evening finishing up some work since I was behind! Many of you may have received confirmation e-mails this evening. The rest of you will receive their confirmations by tomorrow so please bear with us as we finish up a lot of paperwork!

I will be very honest with you. Tonight, I plan to get some rest as tomorrow is our big day! We'll be taking a lot of pictures, coming up with the final numbers, decorating our 1250 pound pallet with the flyers and letters that we printed! All of the fans that have contributed are going to be part of this too, as we are including a full list to prove to CW how dedicated we are. Of course, we will be only including first names, the state (or country for the international fans!), and the amount contributed for privacy purposes.

I did talk to another Wal-Mart about 25 minutes away and they have agreed to hold 40 more pounds of Marshmallows for me! Yes! This makes our total to be a whopping 438 pounds of marshmallows. If I can find another 12 pounds, that would make it an even 450! I should be able to! That is a whole lot of marshmallows!

Nick has posted a draft of his letter at his site and will send me a final draft later tonight. I think it looks great. If you guys have any suggestions, please post on his site or here. If they are valid suggestions, we will make some changes. I will post the final letter tomorrow before I submit it for printing. As you may have noticed, towards the end of his letter he mentioned that the confectionery would be donated to children's charities. I love this idea! You know, regardless of whether this works out, this feels great because I know that all of our efforts will not go in vain. If CW cooperates with us, we'll be putting smiles on hundreds of children's faces and hopefully make their day just a little brighter. Now that is something we can be proud of!

We'll be making a lot of calls tomorrow to both media stations in Houston and some Los Angeles distributors that we've been talking about over the weekend. They should be open Monday (otherwise that's just bad business!) so we will discuss some options to see if we can get more Mars bars or marshmallows delivered simulataneously.

Many fans are asking me what's next? We regroup! We've still got one more campaign to work on after everything gets shipped out. Remember the iTunes campaign? Don't forget it's on Tuesday! I will be posting the exact link again on Tuesday and I urge fans to go through that link. We receive a 5% commission from any purchases made through that link. Since we told you that any revenue generated from this site (via Google's ads or iTunes) will go towards the campaign. So, for every 20 fans that purchase an episode, we will be purchasing another episode so we can get the number even higher! Perhaps it may not make a huge difference, but every little bit counts right!

Now that I think about it, that's exactly what this campaign is about. It's people getting together to make a difference and getting their voice heard. Each of us individually probably would not have an effect, but by coming together, we were able to create this wonderful experience. It's easy to express an opinion or complain. But, we actually did something about it! I know for many of you (myself included), this has been a week to remember!

Good night all! See you in the morning!

-Sachin

Quick addition

Just picked up 48 more pounds of Marshmallows! That makes our total at 398!

Finally some media attention (though it is a very short article...something is better than nothing!)

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/a60331/mars-fans-plan-jericho-like-campaign.html

It's showtime!

Alright fans! It's coming close to the last 24 hours. This is the time where every Veronica Fan in the world needs YOU the most. EVERYONE (and I mean EVERYONE!) needs to make a final push into tomorrow before the shipment. This is truly the last day we have to save this show, as most of tomorrow will be spent putting everything together and making sure we get our shipment out on time. We are fighting a Goliath here, but everyone likes an underdog right?! Regardless of the final result, let's at least make this campaign worthy enough to be proud of! We have a standard to live up to considering the Jericho fans brought their show back! We can't be outdone! If this and Jericho works, this will send a message to the networks that WE ARE TIRED OF THE NETWORKS TELLING US WHAT TO WATCH!

We have to prove to CW that Veronica Mars will get a huge audience this season. For this, I have a new idea. Tell everyone you know about this campaign and about the show. The internet is a powerful thing, let's use it to spread the word! Join the forums & chat rooms, post everywhere, leave messages, send e-mails, do everything!

Today, I'm gonna be spending a lot of time in different Wal-Marts and Targets around Houston collecting whatever scraps of marshmallows and Snickers Almond bars I can find. I feel like interest in the campaign has died down somewhat in the past 24 hours, but you cannot win a race by slowing down towards the finish line! We really need a big surge in interest today!

I'll be picking up the fliers from Kinko's today. I got a copy of one yesterday, and they look great! I printed out different quantities of different fliers based on the number of cases they will be attached to. Here are the pictures we used:

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/8146/veronicamarshh2.png
http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/7243/veronicamars2rp0.png
http://img464.imageshack.us/img464/1268/veronicamars3jd1.png
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/8596/veronicamars4xu5.png

And of course the marshmallow picture I posted already. I'm not sure if you all are aware of this, but we would also like to let you know that we plan on using all of the revenue generated from this site towards the campaign. I believe all of the other sites we are working with are doing this as well.

I should be getting the letter from Nick soon, so I will be posting it for everyone to see. Alright, time to go run around Houston and get some more marshmallows! Let's make this huge! Thanks all!

IMPORTANT REQUEST UPDATE: "Save" in the comment section has just made an important point. It is important for us to find out what kind of building the CW network has. Is it a building to themselves? Does it have a loading dock? How will the pallets be offloaded from the freight truck if there is no loading dock? Can anyone near the CW building find this out for us? The only way we can ship this amount of confectionery at a reasonable cost is through a freight truck. We really cannot ship this much confectionery by UPS or FedEx. I'm asking at least one loyal fan to volunteer to scope out the CW building in Burbank. We need this information fast! Please e-mail me or post here to let us know!

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Can you say Snickers Almond?

Veronica Fans!

Good afternoon to you all...I've had a busy day today and I think I bring good news! Let's start with everyone's favorite...the numbers!

1) Total donation towards the Paypal account is now over $2500 ($2522.16 to be exact!). Wow! From what I understand, yesterdays posting over at aintitcool.com was the big reason. We received a huge surge in donations at that time, so everyone make sure to visit the website and read his article. I also wanted to send a special thank you to the several fan websites that have been in contact with me and working with us.

Scramble Network - Nick was the one that got us involved in the very beginning! Thanks!

SaveVeronicaMars.tv
- Gil has been very cooperative with us and is simultaneously posting updates on his website as well. Gil has also informed us that there is another important campaign going on. On June 12, everyone should go to iTunes and purchase the final episode of Veronica Mars (called "The Bitch is Back"). This way, it will send a message directly to Warner Bros! Some fans want June 14, but I agree that June 12 is better. This will give them some time to let that campaign sink in, and then they will be hit by our delivery on June 14 for a double whammy! Regardless, check back here for updates in case the day changes. For those of you who don't know where to go here is the link.


Veronica Mars - Veronica Mars, Season 3 - The Bitch Is Back


Please support these folks. Without them, the word would not have spread!

2) I got lucky today at one of the Sam's I visited and found an extra 600 bars of Snickers Almond. That makes our total to be a whopping 4848 Snickers Almond bars that will be sent to CW! What a perfect number to make a statement!

So, that makes our total as of today:

4848 Snickers Almond Bars - nearly 550 pounds of Snickers!
1920 Mars Bars from England - nearly 300 pounds of Mars bars!
350 Pounds of Marshmallows
= Thats almost 1200 pounds of confectionery give or take a few pounds!

Four Sam's Clubs in the Houston area are now completely out of stock of Snickers Almond! Wow!

I scoped out a Wal-Mart today for some Marshmallows and by tonight, we might be able to get an extra 25-30 pounds. I realize thats not much, but we will buy everything that's available on the shelf. If anyone else is buying marshmallows/Snickers Almond from other grocery stores and shipping them, let me know so I can post about it!

I also stopped by Kinko's and placed an order for 100 flyers of the assorted images and posters that were sent to me. Rather than make one big poster of only one of the images, I decided to use all the images that were sent to me since they were all so nicely created. We will stick certain ones on the Marshmallow cases, while the general "Save Veronica Mars" flyers to the candy boxes. We hope that this way each of the employees at CW will have one in their hand! I wish we could capture the look on their faces when they get it!

As far as finding a distributor in Los Angeles is concerned, it seems that everyone that I contacted will open Monday morning. I will contact them again (if you know of others, please submit!) on Monday and see if they have any of the items we are looking for. The great thing about finding it in L.A. is that the delivery will happen relatively quickly. Now, just finding one is going to the hard part!

Lastly, some fans have suggested we include a letter or statement to CW to attach to the shipment. Not to worry! Nick at Scramble Network has already been working on this for the past several days, so there will definitely be many copies of that letter attached to the shipment explaining everything and the meaning of all of the items.

That's all for now friends! We'll be posting some pictures soon of the Snickers Almond bars. Monday is our big day as we will be posting pictures (and maybe some video) of the shipment being put together! Keep up the good work! Thanks!

Friday, June 8, 2007

Finally an update!

Hello troops!

I am sure you have been waiting all day for an update. I sincerely apologize that I took so long to post here but I am sure you can understand why! I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. Since I'm an optimist...let's start to tackle the bad news and then we'll get to the good news:

1) Marshmallow Problems - I've been working all day calling around in Houston trying to find some marshmallows. Last night the campaign began to switch to marshmallows and I started working on it immediately after getting back to the office this morning. Unfortunately, I'm not doing too well and was only able to obtain the 350 pounds that are scheduled to be delivered Monday before noon.

I need your help! What can we think of besides marshmallows to send them?!

The things that I can think of are Twinkies ( suggestion from a user from the pilot episode ), Rice Krispy treats (which have marshmallows), and Moon Pies (which have marshmallows also). I realize this is not exactly what everyone wants...but they are likely all to go to charity right!

I've already placed an extra order for 30 cases of extra Snickers Almond so we can take up some more space. I can certainly work on obtaining more since these are much easier to obtain. I'll be running all over Houston tomorrow from Sam's to Sam's getting everything they have. (If someone is in Houston and wants to help, let me know!!) But, I will also be listening to your feedback tonight for something else to send them! This is where I need you the the most. Please try to think of something that Sam's carries so we can get it easily.

2) One distributor backs out...well halfway - One of our distributors in Florida has decided to only contribute 4 Mars Bars cases to the campaign instead of the 12 he promised. His reason: "I need them for my other customers". What a joke! Regardless, all of the other cases from New York and Chicago are already on their way. I will post UPS tracking numbers by tomorrow so fans can track the package live! Our Houston stock will go together with the freight truck!

Now on to the good news....

1) Many fans have concerns that the shipment will not arrive there in time to influence a decision. We found a trucking company today that says it usually takes 3 days. That means delivery should be on June 14th, but just in case something happens, they will definitely get it there by Friday! That's very good news!

2) We are in the process of getting some large posters printed out with "Save Veronica Mars". We are also mass print a very nice picture submitted to us (Thanks Rachel!) and stick it on each of the Mars boxes and just on the pallet in general. We'll plastic wrap the whole thing so that we can make sure they in place when it arrives! You can see the picture here: http://www.aliasgrace.com/mallow/s'mores.pdf

I feel that this is a good use for a portion of our funds.

3) Now to the numbers that you've all been waiting to here:

Congratulations! All of the Mars and Snickers bars thus far have been reserved. That's 1920 Mars Bars (after reduction of the 8 cases) and 4200 Snickers bars (after our additional purchase). A portion of the funds from the Paypal account will be put towards marshmallows, freight costs, labor costs here in Houston (it does cost us to send employees to get things, I do hope you can understand that). Again, this is where I need you all! Please post here with your suggestions and see what we can get going so we can use the balance of the Paypal funds.

As of 8:19PM CST, our funds in Paypal have hit $1524.96. Approximately $900 or so will go towards an extra 100 cases of Snickers almond bars and poster printing. That still leaves us ~$625 to use to promote our cause!

If I may, I have a special request to fans. We really do prefer to receive funds via Paypal rather than orders via . We are able to use the Paypal funds more freely to purchase other goods besides Mars bars since it is not subject to commissions. Still, if you would rather contribute towards the Mars bars, we will still be accepting orders from .

You can use this link:http://scramblenetwork.googlepages.com/home

A very nice fan (Thanks Rama!) gave us the idea that we should contact a distributor of chocolates or marshmallows in Los Angeles, CA so we can get delivery on an exact day. I thought this was a wonderful idea and he is already helping me with this. If anyone knows someone in Los Angeles that is able to deliver or ship to the offices in Burbank, I think that is something worth looking into.

Lastly, some have requested to see what the actual Mars bars cases look like. Here is a picture I took of the 13 cases going from our location ( I can't get pictures of the other ones since they were coming from different cities)




Sorry for the long post guys...it feels like an eternity since I wrote to you last. I wanted to be very honest with you as to what is actually going on rather than telling you what may happen.

-Sachin & the rest of TheIndianFoodStore family

Sigh...Problems!

Hey fans!

We had some issues with since we were not compliant with their rules. It looks like they removed the two listings of the single Mars bar and the 6 Pack Mars bar. Here are the new links for the product:

I apologize for all this confusion! Let's make this item the #1 seller on our site for three straight days!

One fan asked whether this affects user who have already placed orders...no it does not! If you have already placed an order, everything went through fine (unless they change it on me!)

Thanks!

Update!

Alright fans!

I just ordered 350 pounds of Marshmallows scheduled to arrive at the warehouse Monday before noon. We are definitely shipping this via a freight company as the marshmallows themselves are a pallet. We are working to try to obtain more marshmallows but you'd be surprised at how difficult it is to find some in bulk quantities! Sam's or Costco doesn't carry them, and the distributors here really don't care. We're handing them business and they still don't return our calls!

I wanted to let everyone know that we are looking at pretty expensive rates to California from Houston. I am working with a couple of freight companies to find the best rates so we can use more money towards putting more marshmallows, but I do want to be honest with you. A portion of the funds will be used to pay for the transportation as it is a cost of doing this campaign. But, with your support, we can still make this work!

Apparently, we are not allowed to advertise our blog or other websites on the product page, so we have removed them. Please do not think that the campaign is off, but we had to make some changes to comply with their policies. You can still continue to place your orders with the code "VERONICA" as everything is still going through the same system. Only the product detail page has changed.

Will update later today!

Marshmallow update

Just a quick marshmallow update...

We were able to initially obtain about 300 pounds of Marshmallows this morning. That sounds like a small amount but as you can imagine, 300 pounds of very lightweight marshmallows definitely adds up! It is almost a pallet in itself...so we may be able to get 2 pallets sent to CW when combined with the chocolate bars!

We are working to try get some more from other distributors...but no one we contact seems to have large quantities marshmallows in Houston! We're trying for Sysco Foodservice once they return our call...

Thanks!

Good morning! Lots of news!

Good morning Veronica Mars lovers!

Today is the day we can make this big! Since today is the last weekday, we need a HUGE push into the weekend to make this news spread all over the country. I assume there are thousands of fans that are not aware of this campaign and may never be if they do not hear it from their friends or on the news! I've got several things I'd like to discuss with all of you and I need your feedback.
Things definitely picked up last night:

1) Our donation pool has increased to $929.61 as of 8:53AM CST. The Mars bars have almost all been purchased. We are looking into getting some more from Canada, but it looks highly unlikely due to the short time frame. We will update you on this.

2) But, since you all are so wonderful, there has been much talk about adding marshmallows to the campaign! We are looking into this today and we should be able to obtain some! The reason fans have chosen marshmallows is because on the pilot episode, there is a memorable line that says "Veronica Mars, she's a marshmallow". This is a great idea since marshmallows take up much more room than a single chocolate bar! We will update you throughout the day of our progress and how much we can get together.

3) Many of you have been excited about the 18-wheeler! A pallet is actually a roughly 4 ft x 6 ft wooden piece that lets us stack product on top to ship in 18-wheelers. If you've ever been to Sam's Club, then you'll see how they stack up product on wooden pallets. We just wanted to clarify (so there won't be any more disappointments later) that unless we get HUGE publicity and HUGE campaign support, filling up the entire 18-wheeler is difficult. However, by shipping all of this confectionery on a pallet, we will get the effect of a huge truck trying to deliver to CW which should make their mouths drop! This leads us to our next issue...

4) If we want this to work, we have to work fast! A fan (Thanks Ellie!) has given me a great idea to pass on. Apparently, Kristin from E! Online is a huge fan. If we can send her thousands of e-mails, she might mention the campaign on the show and this could become huge! So, my request is that all of us get together and e-mail her and other media outlets to get this going. You can e-mail her here: http://www.eonline.com/gossip/kristin/

Click on Ask Kristin for the form! If you can think of other outlets, let us know and we will post them! Make sure to be nice!

Update: You can e-mail Michael Ausiello From TVGuide at ask_ausellio@tvguide.com

5) As always, thank you for the support you have given us. All of us here at TheIndianFoodStore are truly humbled by this experience. Let's make this happen! We will be posting more pictures as soon as we get some time!

-Sachin & the rest of TheIndianFoodStore team


Edit: We thought it might be a good idea to get a huge poster of Veronica Mars to put on the shipment. We can also print designs of "Save Veronica Mars" to tape to the boxes of Snickers and Mars. If anyone can come up with an idea or design, please let us know! We will try to print all designs submitted! As far as a video is concerned, I will try to work with the trucking company to get an exact time of delivery. The problem is Mars Bars are coming from New York and Florida via UPS and FedEx, and our massive shipment from Houston is hopefully coming via a freight truck. Freight companies usually don't give us exact times but we will see what we can do!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Final Update for Tonight

Wow! What a day! I have to say I have never experienced anything like this haha. To all the fans that have been telling me I need to watch the show, I will be getting the season DVD's this weekend and watching it!

But first, to the numbers:

Total number of Mars Bars purchased for campaign: 2204
Total donations received for the campaign: $561.27 (after all Paypal fees) - we will allocate this money once we figure out the total costing of all of the chocolate.

Total Mars Bars planning to be shipped: 2952
(We hope to find some more in Canada tomorrow. The only issue is that we need to have it there on or before Friday...we will update you as soon as we find out more info)

Total Mars Snickers bars already prepared for shipment: 3024
(We should have another 4500 bars or so available by Monday if more people get together.)

If we can get more people, we can make this a massive pallet (or more!) full of chocolate Mars bars and ship it via an 18 wheeler truck! This would require approximately 25-30 thousand bars of chocolate! Now that would make a statement! We really need someone to volunteer to make a video if they live nearby the station. That would be great for all the fans.

Many people have given us the idea of stuffing their building with marshmallow since on the pilot episode, Veronica was referred to as a "marshmallow". IF we get enough responses from people supporting this, we will work on getting marshmallows as well to make an even bigger statement! Since marshmallows take up more space than chocolate, this may be a better option. Comment here or e-mail us if you think this is a good idea.

Well, good night Veronica lovers! Will be up bright and early calling Canada!

PICTURES!



Woohoo! Thank to all!



Wow! This is when we were loading!

Update: Ms. Debbi said her boss does not like that her pictures are being posted with her badge.
Ms. Debbi at Sam's showing her support. We're trying to get all the Snickers Almonds we can get! She will be arranging for us to pick another 75 cases tomorrow and hopefully more if we get more people! Thanks Debbi!

To all you wonderful fans,

*PHEW* Our entire family has been running around all day trying to get Mars bars and Snickers Almond bars from around the country. (One post mentioned that we could go for Canadian distributors...great idea! we will try that tomorrow!). Here are some pictures we recently took of our adventure to get all the Snickers Almonds bars in our area.







We will be posting more pictures of the actual Mars bars when we get back to the office tomorrow morning! Stay tuned!

Contact us

Some of you have asked for our contact information, so here it is:

Media Inquiries: 713-661-2972
Our offices will be open from 8:30AM - 5:00PM CSt
Please ask for Sachin Agrawal

E-mail inquiries/comments: sachin86@gmail.com, or info@spicyusa.com

It is a bit crazy here as you can imagine. Fans, please send your comments via e-mail so we can focus on getting more chocolate for this campaign. We love your comments and e-mails! Keep 'em coming!


Update: As of 6:03PM CST, 1947 bars have been reserved!
We've also received $232.99 in donations in the past few hours! I will calculate how many Snickers Almond bars we can purchase once we can get our hands on a big quantity!

Veronica Mars Pool

We have arranged with Scramble Network (Thanks to Nick!) and several other websites to create a pool so we can make this process much more efficient. If you would rather donate a single amount towards the pool than go through you can visit the Scramble Network here and make a donation:

http://scramblenetwork.wordpress.com/mars/

All donations will be used towards purchasing more Mars and Snickers Almond Bars for the shipment. Please note the cut off time is Monday, June 11 at 3:00pm CST. We will ship all of our Houston shipments at that time.

Thanks!

Case Quantities

Dear Fans,

Many of you have commented as to how many bars come in a case. There are 48 bars in a case.

If you see the previous posts, you will see how we came up with the number. I am trying to arrange some Snickers Almond bars so we will update you once we get it!

Mars

UPDATE!

ATTENTION Fans, please place your orders via www.theindianfoodstore.com. We pay a very large percentage fee to get for listing on their website. Instead, they have a program called where they charge much less commission fees.

If you order directly from our site, we do not have to pay these large commissions for no reason! We can then use that savings to purchase more Mars Bars and Snickers Almond Bars around the country! Here is the link:

http://theindianfoodstore.com/search.htm?keyword=mars+bar

Of course, if you feel more comfortable with their system, then feel free to do it. However, we do request you place your orders via that website. You will still be able to track the order via your account since it is still affilliated with them.

Thanks in advance!


Here are some links to make it easier for you although we prefer if you support through our own website:

Cut - Off Time!

Many people have e-mailed us and commented here about the cut-off time. We are arranging shipments from Florida, New York, and Chicago at the moment as well as our own Houston shipment. Because it takes some time to get to their offices in California, the cut off time is Monday at 3:00PM CST.

We already have boxes going out today from these different areas so that there is a bombardment of chocolate coming in for three days in a row! This should really cause them some trouble and hopefully change their minds!

Back to work!

-Sachin & The rest of TheIndianFoodStore Team

update!

Dear Fans,

Wow! We are arranging over 48 MASTER cases of Mars Bar to be shipped directly to their location from distributors around the country. This means a total of 2304 Mars bars will be delivered on three consecutive days. Along with this shipment will come our own stock of 648 bars (13 cases + some extras). We must have bought nearly all of the Mars bars in the country!

We've received orders for approximately half of that and we expect this stock will be completed by the end of Friday at the current rate! Of course, it may be finished even faster as people become more aware of this!


Someone in the comment section gave us a suggestion that Snickers Almond Bars are the same as Mars Bars and they prominently display a "Mars" logo. If the majority agrees, we can try to arrange 4-5 thousand bars of that and send it along with this big shipment. Of course, these are more readily available (and cheaper!) than the Mars Bars. So, if everyone can give us a show of support for this, we can look into it and get it (hopefully!) arranged. Once the Mars bars run out, we will lower the price, of course, to reflect the lower cost.

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR YOUR COMMENTS! I am having nearly half of our company on this.

Update: We have decided not to post any names. Some fans are concerned about privacy issues and we completely understand. We will only be putting the total of chocolate bars being sent!

TheIndianFoodStore - Bars for Mars Campaign -

Wow!

Hello Veronica Mars fans, lovers, and supporters!

UNBELIEVEABLE! That is first thing that comes to my mind when I woke up this morning! At first, I have to admit that I thought it was Ms. Dawn Ostroff's birthday and she must have desperately requested Mars bars from all her friends. Of course, a Google search and a couple of hundred orders quickly cleared up that up! I'll be honest, we've never watched the show before but WOW, we are impressed! Your enthusiasm and support for the show has awed us all! I have been in contact with some of you in the past day or two and I realized how powerful this has become! Apparently, CBS's Jericho had a similar campaign and it worked! I'm fired up to make this work too!

If you are curious, we are a small family business located in Houston, TX that just recently started our online operations. We have been importing from India and England for several years now and primarily distribute to retail stores and grocery stores around the country. We have yet to become profitable in this aspect of our operation, but this publicity will certainly help! More importantly, I am so happy that I am involved in this, especially since I have been able to communicate with so many fans directly. Once things settle down a little, I'll be sure to watch all of the shows in the past seasons!

As we attempt to inform you with updates, we are calling all distributors we know around the country trying to buy Mars Bars. (We had to raise the prices $.20 just to reflect this, so we apologize for this!). I've created this blog to get fans to post their comments and give us suggestions on how we can improve this. We've only got until Monday to make this work since it will take some time for FedEx to arrive to their facility! (By the way, can anyone get a video of the FedEx driver pulling into the CW facility so we can show all the fans?)

Of course, I'd love to hear your suggestions. Leave a message here and I will do my best to reply!