[ad_1]
NEW YORK — Eclipse-themed beer. Jewelry and ornaments. And doughnuts that capture the sun’s disappearing act with the help of buttercream frosting.
A donut with toppings representing an eclipse is displayed March 8 at the Donut Dude shop in Liberty Township, Ohio. Businesses are capitalizing on the April 8 eclipse with an array of themed goods.
With April 8’s total solar eclipse right around the corner, businesses are ready for the celestial event that will dim skies along a generous path across North America.
There are oodles of special eclipse safety glasses for sale, along with T-shirts emblazoned with clever slogans and other souvenirs — just like the last time the U.S. got a big piece of the total solar eclipse action in 2017.
People are also reading…
Hotels and resorts along the prime path are luring in visitors with special packages and Southwest and Delta are selling seats on eclipse-viewing flights. Cities, museums and parks are staging watch parties to draw in tourists as well as residents.
“This is a special event and … the travel industry certainly is in a very good spot,” said Jie Zhang, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland’s business school. She also noted the eclipse craze arrives at a time when consumers are continuing to ramp up spending on new experiences.
Big Cuppa, a cafe in Morrilton, Ark., is offering a drink called the “Moon Pie Frappa” along with a full eclipse menu.
Closer to eclipse day, there are likely to be more special products and promotions from national brands springing up, like Moon Pie’s “eclipse survival kit,” made up of four mini versions of the chocolate snack and two pairs of eclipse glasses.
Small businesses within the eclipse’s 115-mile-wide path of totality appear to be leading the charge so far. Online shops and local vendors have put together a full array of creative, limited-edition merchandise: earrings, baby onesies, ornaments, games, banners and more.
Some towns and business owners have been anticipating the celestial event and huge crowds for years.
After the 2017 eclipse, “I marked my calendar,” said Sam McNulty, co-founder of Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland, which is in the eclipse path this time and will see nearly four minutes of dimmed skies.
Last year, McNulty’s team brewed a hazy IPA called “The Totality” to help drum up interest in the eclipse. The on tap debut was a success, and the brewery was soon approached by local grocer Heinen’s to partner for a canned collaboration.
In the coming weeks, “thousands and thousands” of cans are set to hit store shelves, McNulty said — adding they decided to go big because of how rare the event is. Cleveland won’t be in the path of totality again for a long time — not until 2444.
Cleveland-based Market Garden Brewery partnered with Midwest grocery chain Heinen’s to sell cans of hazy IPA called “The Totality” ahead of the total solar eclipse on April 8.
“I don’t want to have to wait 420 years to brew the next batch of cans,” he joked. “So we made a very large one this time.”
The eclipse-themed beverages don’t stop at beer. Big Cuppa, a coffee shop in Morrilton, Arkansas, also has a full eclipse menu with a handful of specialty drinks. Its “Moon Pie Frappa” is a blended Moon Pie drink flavored with dark chocolate and toasted marshmallow.
Big Cuppa co-owner Joseph Adam Krutz said that he’s excited to greet customers and the many new faces set to travel through town next month. Krutz said his shop has been gearing up for a while along with other businesses in downtown Morrilton. He drives by a countdown clock each day.
“We’re prepared. Bring it on,” Krutz said.
And don’t forget the snacks. In Ohio’s Butler County, a shop called The Donut Dude will have an “Eclipse Donut Special” that shows the eclipse’s stages as the sun disappears behind the moon.
A box of donuts arranged to represent phases of an eclipse is displayed March 8 at the Donut Dude shop in Liberty Township, Ohio.
The special goes on sale later this month and consists of seven filled-doughnuts with rolled buttercream, two galaxy-themed cake doughnuts and safety glasses so customers can watch the event while snacking away.
“We’re anticipating a lot of fun,” co-owner Glen Huey said.
Since the doughnut shop is closed on Mondays, Huey is looking forward to watching the spectacle as it passes over his town between Cincinnati and Dayton.
In the U.S., Texas has the best odds for clear skies and the state expects to be swarmed with tourists. With a prime location, eateries in the town of Grapevine have a multitude of offerings: a “Blackout Dinner” at Hotel Vin and a “Solar Eclipse Shake” at Son of a Butcher.
Many businesses along the path of totality are offering special events leading up to the eclipse, too.
New York’s Cayuga Lake Wine Trail is promoting “Sips to the Eclipse” for the weekend ahead of April 8. Guests will be able to visit 10 wineries for tastings — some of which are offering additional attractions like an eclipse eve tarot card reading, special slushies and half-moon cookies.
Katherine Chase, executive director of the wine trail, said the promotion was planned in anticipation of all the people coming to the Finger Lakes region for the eclipse.
“The wineries can go as big or as little as they’d like to entice folks to come,” she said.
Total solar eclipses through the decades
FILE – Eclipse watchers squint through protective filters as they view an eclipse of the sun from the top deck of New York’s Empire State Building in New York on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 1932. Full solar eclipses occur every year or two or three, often in the middle of nowhere like the South Pacific or Antarctic.
FILE – A total solar eclipse is observed above the mountainous Siberian Altai region, about 3,000 kilometers (1,850 miles) east of Moscow, on Friday, Aug. 1, 2008.
FILE – A youth dressed as a shaman arrives to take part in a photo session before Tuesday’s total solar eclipse, in La Higuera, Chile, Monday, July 1, 2019.
FILE – A group of school children look at the solar eclipse in Accra, Ghana, Wednesday, March 29, 2006, which swept from Brazil to Mongolia.
FILE – The progression of a total solar eclipse is seen in a multiple exposure photograph taken in 5-minute intervals, with the moon passing in front of the sun above Siem Reap in northwestern Cambodia, 225 kilometers (140 miles) from Phnom Penh, on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 1995.
FILE – A child looks through protective glasses at the total eclipse of the sun as a projection of the sun is displayed on card, during a total solar eclipse seen near the Bulgarian’s Black sea town of Varna east of the capital Sofia, Friday, Aug. 1, 2008.
FILE – The moon starts to block the sun during a solar eclipse seen through a cloud, in Skopje, Macedonia, Friday, March 20, 2015, in the last total solar eclipse visible in Europe for over a decade.
FILE – A man watches a solar eclipse through an x-ray film in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, March 9, 2016.
FILE – The moon passes in front of the setting sun during a total solar eclipse in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, July 2, 2019.
FILE – Shepherd Heinz Greiner watches the beginning of a total solar eclipse near Augsburg, southern Germany, on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 1999. A German myth has the cold and lazy male moon, ignoring the fiery passionate female sun during the day most of the time, except for a few bits of passion during an eclipse and then they’d squabble again and the sun would resume shining again, Mark Littmann of the University of Tennessee says.
FILE – The sun sets over Hyderabad, India during the last phases of the last total solar eclipse of the millennium Wednesday, Aug. 11, 1999.
FILE – Vietnamese student Dang Anh Tuan shows a projected image of a solar eclipse at an observatory in Hanoi National University of Education in Hanoi, Vietnam, Wednesday, July 22, 2009, during the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, though in most of Vietnam, people will only be able to see a partial eclipse.
FILE – This multiple exposure photograph shows the progression of a partial solar eclipse over the Gateway Arch in St. Louis on Aug. 21, 2017.
FILE – Magdalena Nahuelpan, a Mapuche Indigenous girl, looks at a total solar eclipse using special glasses in Carahue, La Araucania, Chile, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. The total eclipse was visible from Chile and the northern Patagonia region of Argentina, and as a partial solar eclipse in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
FILE – People view a total solar eclipse from La Higuera, Chile, Tuesday, July 2, 2019.
FILE – People watch in darkness during the totality of a solar eclipse on as seen from a hill beside a hotel on the edge of the city overlooking Torshavn, the capital city of the Faeroe Islands, Friday, March 20, 2015.
FILE – In this photo provided by NASA, the International Space Station is silhouetted against the sun during a solar eclipse Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, as seen from Ross Lake, Northern Cascades National Park in Washington state.
FILE – A young shepherd carries a goat as he watches a partial solar eclipse in the village of Bqosta, near the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Wednesday, March 29, 2006. In Lebanon the Education Ministry ordered all public schools closed for the day with advice to families to keep children indoors during the solar eclipse which started around noon.
FILE – People watch the total solar eclipse from Svalbard, Norway on Friday March 20, 2015.
FILE – Using a welder’s mask as protection, a man views a total eclipse in Piedra del Aguila, Argentina, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. The total solar eclipse was visible from the northern Patagonia region of Argentina and from Araucania in Chile, and as a partial eclipse from the lower two-thirds of South America.
FILE – An man uses special glasses to view a partial solar eclipse as people gather near the Sphinx at the Giza Pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, Friday, March 20, 2015. The partial eclipse was visible across Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, while sky-gazers in the Arctic were treated to a perfect view of a total solar eclipse as the moon completely blocked out the sun in a clear sky.
FILE – Lucy Maphiri, left, and Margaret Makuya watch the total solar eclipse over Shingwedzi camp in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002.
FILE – Ukrainian man watches a partial solar eclipse through a strip of film in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 29, 2006. The moon began blocking out the sun in the morning in Brazil before the path of greatest blockage migrated to Africa, then on to Turkey and up into Mongolia, where it will fade out with the sunset.
FILE – Images of the crescent shaped sun are projected on a sidewalk as light passes through the leaves of a tree during a partial solar eclipse in Oklahoma City, Monday, Aug. 21, 2017.
FILE – A total solar eclipse is barely visible through the clouds in Carahue, La Araucania, Chile Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. The total eclipse was visible from Chile and the northern Patagonia region of Argentina, and as a partial solar eclipse in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
FILE – Steve Spalding of Chattanooga squints through the viewfinder of a movie camera for the sun at a Valdosta industrial park as the solar eclipse began in Valdosta, Ga., on Saturday, March 7, 1970. The search was in vain, however, as the sun remained hidden behind a heavy cloud cover before hiding behind the moon. In background, many of the amateur astronomers who traveled to see the total eclipse from as far as western Canada stand disappointedly beside idle telescopes.
FILE – Members of the British Astronomers Association prepare their telescopes at their campsite near Truro, England, on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 1999, preparing for a total solar eclipse the next day.
FILE – A total solar eclipse is seen from an aircraft over Patna, India, Wednesday, July 22, 2009.
FILE – A crowd reacts to the view of a partial solar eclipse as it peaks at over 70% percent coverage on Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, in New York.
FILE – Thousands of tourists gather to view a solar eclipse in front of Apollo Temple in the Turkish Mediterranean coastal resort of Side, Turkey, Wednesday March 29, 2006.. Astronomers from NASA and Britain’s Royal Institute of Astronomy watched the eclipse from an ancient Roman theater. The total solar eclipse began at sunrise on the eastern tip of Brazil, crossesed the Atlantic and made landfall in Ghana, headed north across the Sahara, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey and the Black Sea, and on into Central Asia, where it will finally die out at sunset in Mongolia.
FILE – Stone statues known as Moais stand together during a total solar eclipse in Easter Island, Chile, some 4,000 kilometers (2,480 miles) west of the Chilean coast, Sunday, July 11, 2010.
[ad_2]
Source link
