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Can the pumpkin spice latte phenomenon be repeated, only in winter? Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, and others hope so—and they're heaping on sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and chestnut flavors into new drinks to make it happen.

It’s no wonder coffee chains are trying to replicate the retail magic that appears annually in the form of autumn’s onslaught of pumpkin spice beverages. A hot seasonal beverage is proven to juice sales big time. To milk the PSL (Pumpkin Spice Latte) frenzy even more, Starbucks rolled out the beverage earlier than usual this past summer in many parts of the country, and it boosted sales to the surprise of no one.

Peppermint, which is known to increase physiological arousal and heightens alertness, has been a popular flavor in holiday season beverages, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, McDonald’s, and 7-Eleven, among many others, are bringing peppermint-laced hot drinks back to their winter menus. But the new holiday beverages go far beyond a mere minty twist, with chestnut, cinnamon, gingerbread, sugar cookie, and other sickly sweet flavors providing the rush. (Perhaps that puzzlingly catchy Def Leppard song was really about holiday season coffees?)

When done right, a hot seasonal beverage succeeds for the seller two-fold by 1) drawing in customers early and often, at least partially because any limited-time offer won’t be around forever and people don’t want to miss out; and 2) getting customers to pay more than usual for their caffeine fix. As NPD Group analyst Bonnie Riggs explained of all unique coffee beverages, customers “expect to pay a premium because the specialty drinks … are not something they can replicate at home or easily get at retail.”

All of which helps explain why Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and others have introduced these new contenders for the 2014 winter season:

Starbucks Chestnut Praline Latte
In the same way that pumpkin spice has come to be the dominant, most eagerly anticipated flavor of fall, Starbucks is hoping its brand-new Chestnut Praline Latte becomes inextricably tied to the winter holiday season. “The rich, earthy, sweet, roastiness of chestnut is a perfect foil to espresso. Then we balanced the nutty chestnut flavor with brown sugar and spice,” Starbucks research and development manager Amy Dilger said of the new latte, which is the company’s first new holiday beverage in five years. “It’s a quintessential flavor of the holiday season.”

To get customers to sample the goods early in the season, Starbucks is having a buy-one, get-one-free special on holiday drinks, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. through November 16.

Dunkin’ Donuts Sugar Cookie Latte
Less than a week after Halloween, Dunkin’ Donuts introduced its lineup of sugary winter beverages, including two cookie-flavored lattes: the Sugar Cookie Latte and the Snickerdoodle Latte. They’re both available in hot or cold varieties, as is Dunkin’s Peppermint Mocha, which is back again this holiday season.

Caribou Coffee Gingersnap Cookie Mocha
With “hints of ginger, allspice and clove,” the Gingersnap Cookie Mocha from Caribou Coffee is trying to make its case as the hot caffeinated beverage of the season. Previous seasonal brews also are returning to Caribou’s menu, including the Ho Ho Mint Mocha and special Reindeer Blend coffee—and thank goodness the latter is false advertising. (The coffee contains no real reindeer ingredients, but does have “a hint of caramel and a dash of spice.”)

Peet’s Cinnamon Hazelnut Latte
Peet’s is bringing back holiday beverages such as the Sea Salt Caramel Mocha, Eggnog Latte, and Winter Solstice Tea, while also introducing a new seasonal beverage, the Cinnamon Hazelnut Latte. Follow the link for a coupon granting a free small seasonal beverage with the purchase of any food item, now through November 26.

People in New York City tell our Mannes on the Street about their Thanksgiving weekend shopping plans.

A pay-what-you-want investing service? Yes, it's here—and it's hardly the only business bold (crazy?) enough to allow customers to pay whatever they feel is appropriate, even $0.

On November 11, a new investment company called Aspiration launches with the goals of “democratizing the financial services industry,” “making elite investments available to everyday investors,” and “building a movement around the idea that you can make money and make a difference at the same time.” The minimum investment is only $500, and the pitch is that at long last, middle-class investors will get access to the kinds of investment products that traditionally have been available only to the rich. The concept is noble enough, and the focus on regular folks is certainly refreshing, yet Aspiration is hardly the only service out there aiming to woo less affluent investors.

No, what makes Aspiration truly unique—unheard of, in fact—is its fee structure. Or rather, the absence of a fee structure. Instead of charging a fee, Aspiration “allows its customers to decide how much to pay the company – even if that number is zero,” the launch announcement explains. “Aspiration calls this approach ‘Pay What Is Fair’ and while it has been tried before in one-off fashion, this is the first time it has been brought to the investment world and the first time a company has built its business model on this approach.”

Whether such a revolutionary business model can work for investing or is little more than a gimmick is impossible to tell right now. For obvious reasons, “pay what you want” is a curiosity that’s intriguing to consumers and grabs plenty of headlines, but thus far other PWYW experiments have yielded results that are decidely mixed. For example:

Restaurants: Bubby’s, an all-American restaurant with two locations in Manhattan, is running a “Pay Whatever You Like” buffet Thanksgiving dinner with some of the proceeds going to charity, and it’s clear the owners expect customers to pay a pretty penny: There’s a “suggested donation” of $75 per person. Another restaurant, a diner in North Carolina called Just Cookin, recently removed prices from the menu, leaving the exact amount paid for food and service up to the customer and God.

In probably the most well-known PWYW restaurant trial, the fast-casual chain Panera Bread opened a nonprofit café five years ago, and the experiment was so successful that in early 2013 the concept was expanded to four dozen St. Louis locations, which offered turkey chili on a pay-what-you-want basis. Roughly half a year later, however, PWYW chili was removed from menus. Apparently Panera received tons of generous donations early on in the program, but interest (and money collected) faded as time passed. Even so, there are still five nonprofit Panera Cares locations in the U.S., where the menus have suggested donations but no set prices.

Payday App: The biggest problem with payday loans is that while the fees might seem small—say $15 per $100 borrowed—the terms represent the loanshark-like equivalent of an APR of 400%. Enter ActiveHours, a payday loan alternative that pays customers immediately for the hours they’ve already worked and, incredibly, has no mandatory fees.

“We don’t think people should be forced to pay for services they don’t love, so we ask you to pay what you think is fair based on your personal experience,” the ActiveHours site explains. Even so, consumer advocates warn that people who become dependent on such a service are more likely to wind up behind on their bills, and they also might wind up (voluntarily) paying tips to the service that are themselves the equivalent of a loanshark’s terms.

Taxis: In 2009, during perhaps the Great Recession’s darkest days, a former Wall Street banker named Eric Hagen introduced Recession Ride Taxi, a PWYW cab service in Burlington, Vt. Hagen offered rides only on nights and weekends as a way to help people out and perhaps make a few dollars. Even though Uber and other ride-share services would seem to be encroaching on Hagen’s idea, Recession Ride Taxi is still running—and still operating on a PWYW basis.

Book, Music, Comedy Downloads: Way back in 2000, Stephen King decided to skip over publishers and sell a serial novel called “The Plant” strictly in digital e-book format using an honor system. Readers were asked to pay $1 per installment, and King said he would keep writing if three-quarters of those who downloaded the book paid up. At one point, less than half of those downloading were actually paying for the book, and the author never completed it—though the author reportedly earned nearly $500 million in the venture. As things now stand, the six existing parts of “The Plant” are available for free download at King’s website.

In 2007, Radiohead began selling digital downloads of an album called “In Rainbows,” and when fans dropped it into the virtual checkout basket, the only price listed was “It’s Up to You.” Some rock-n-roll old-timers, including KISS’s Gene Simmons, were not impressed. “That’s not a business model that works,” Simmons said at the time. “I open a store and say, ‘Come on in and pay whatever you want.’ Are you on f***ing crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?” Nonetheless, Radiohead’s move was probably ahead of its time considering that few artists make money selling their music nowadays anyway.

More recently, the work of Louis C.K., who over the years has been at the forefront of unorthodox direct-sales strategies including selling comedy special downloads for a flat $5 and comedy show tickets with no intermediaries or fees, was featured in a “Humble Bundle” of comedy albums offered on a pay-what-you-want basis. Humble Bundle is known for bundling together several video games and allowing customers to pay whatever they like for the package, with portions of the payment going to the developers, charity, and Humble Bundle.

What's it been like to partake in Olive Garden's seven-week all-you-can-eat Pasta Pass? One participant likens the pass to Tolkien's Ring of Power, "immensely powerful, yes, but dangerous and probably better off destroyed."

In September, Olive Garden unleashed an unprecedented Neverending Pasta Pass promotion on the American public, offering a total of 1,000 of the passes—which entitle the holder to unlimited pasta, breadsticks, soup or salad, and Coca-Cola beverages—for just $100 apiece. The deal sold out in just a few minutes.

For passholders—several of whom have blogged or been interviewed about the experience—eating an absurd amount of Olive Garden food has brought on a rollercoaster of emotions, from excitement to depression to downright goofiness. There’s even been some trash-talking among a few of the Pasta Pass pugilists, as Howard Cosell might have called them. There have been obscenely enormous collections of Olive Garden leftovers stuffed in their refrigerators. And, it’s safe to say, the experiment has left behind exactly zero six-pack abs in its wake.

With the pass officially expiring as of Sunday, November 9, it’s time to reflect on a few of the other major takeaways from the experience:

It’s Been Quite a Value
Each Pasta Pass cost only $100, and considering that regular diners pay $9.99 per meal for what’s included in the pass, passholders needed to eat only ten times at Olive Garden for the purchase to pay off. As you might imagine, some made it their mission to get as much out of the pass as possible.

Alan Martin, a pastor from Burlington, N.C., said earlier this week that he’d already eaten at Olive Garden 100 times, meaning his $100 pass was averaging out to $1 per sit-down. He plans on consuming $1,800 worth of food and drink before the pass expires. “I would love to be the person that ate the most of the 1,000 people” who bought passes, the “Pasta Passtor” told a local TV station, which filmed Martin (of course) at Olive Garden dining on pasta and chicken. “That would be a good contest to win because that means I got the most value out of the card of anyone in the United States.”

Bear in mind that maximizing the value from a $100 Olive Garden pass could also mean consuming upwards of 100,000 calories during the seven weeks the pass is valid.

It’s Made Them Semi-Famous
Martin has been featured on local TV stations multiple times, and was highlighted by the “Today Show” after eating his 100th Olive Garden meal with the pass on November 5. When asked about what he would do when the pass expires on Sunday, Martin admitted he was unsure, and a little scared. “I have no idea what I’m going to eat for lunch Monday morning,” he said.

Several other passholders have gotten attention in the media because they’ve been blogging about their OG dining experience. Most notably, there’s Matt Pershe, a recent UPenn graduate whose Tumblr has been mentioned by Eater, Philadelphia magazine, and Forbes, among others.

There’s Been Some Trash Talking
A passholder going by the name “Vino” has had plenty of fun running the blog AllofGarden.com. He’s created customized names for Olive Garden’s different pasta dishes, such as Angelhare, Depression, Acceptance, and Futility (instead of fusilli, presumably), and even coined a few pastas in honor of his fellow passholders, including Hagana, named after the blogger chronicling the experience at 49 Days of Pasta.

On Friday, Vino posted what has to be the funniest Pasta Pass trash-talking video ever. In the tongue-in-cheek post, Vino calls out Pasta Pass top dog Alan Martin—he of multiple TV appearances—for saying on camera that he’d vaguely eaten “about” 95 meals at Olive Garden. “Let me guess Alan, math isn’t your strong suit?” Vino says to his webcam, before listing his own “accomplishments” in terms of Olive Garden consumption—”a heart-rending story of love, loss, and carbs,” he says. Then the smack really comes down.

“Face it Alan, you’re old. Pasta’s slowing you down. Me? I’m young, spry. Every bite I take only makes me hungrier,” Vino says. “And I won’t rest until I show you, and every imPASTer like you what I’m made out of.” Naturally, the video ends with Vino taking a shark-like bite out of a breadstick.

It’s Been Emotional
Dining on pasta at a chain restaurant for weeks has caused several participants to have some pretty deep thoughts. It’s been a rollercoaster of highs, lows, and carbs. “A few days ago, I was excited for the Pasta Pass to end,” Hagana Kim of 49 Days of Pasta wrote when week six of the pasta experiment just passed. “Now that the end is staring me in the face, I’m sad. Depressed, even. I may do some unpredictable things this week.”

On the other hand, UPenn grad Matt Pershe seems more than ready to be done with OG. “I’m thrilled to announce that there is one week remaining for my Never Ending Pasta Pass,” he wrote around Halloween. “I think of the Never Ending Pasta Pass nowadays as something like the ring in Lord of the Rings. Immensely powerful, yes, but dangerous and probably better off destroyed.”

The Pass Has Inspired Poetry
Over at the Pastageddon blog, Max from Pennsylvania has posted a smorgasbord of Olive Garden-inspired imagined scenes and oddball poetry, often related to movies ranging from “Pulp Fiction” to “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” His Halloween post included a twist on the haunting children’s rhyme from “Nightmare on Elm Street”:

One, two, OG’s coming for you
Three, four, better lock your door
Five, six, get your pasta fix
Seven, eight, gonna finish the plate
Nine, ten, never eat again

It’s Sometimes Been Sickening
Beyond having fun, the bloggers have all included some reviews of the food. Some of them have been quite good, while others … not so much. On Day 31, Matt Pershe finally willed himself to finally try a dish with Italian sausage, and it wasn’t pretty. “Between the sausage and the five cheese marinara, the dish looked something like a frat row sidewalk on a Saturday night,” he wrote. “Appearances aside, the texture of the sausage was the same texture you’d get from a sausage in a Super 8 continental breakfast.”

Even worse is what was described at Pastageddon recently. “Since I am on the last week I thought I would try the Zuppa soupa but i’m sorry I did because it gave me the poopas,” the post reads. “I don’t know if it was the soup, pasta or shrimp but I’m currently sitting here hoping I don’t puke.”

For a little while on Tuesday, deal-tracking sites went nuts promoting a download of 290 AC/DC songs for just $6.99. Alas, the offer was too good to be true.

[UPDATE: Apparently, the AC/DC deal at Amazon was a pricing glitch that was never supposed to exist. It's enough to make you bang your head ... in frustration.]

For a long time, AC/DC was a holdout in terms of joining the digital age of music. The Aussie hard-rock band reluctantly joined iTunes only in 2012—with individual song downloads selling for $1.29 apiece and a complete set of albums and box sets available for $150. Today on iTunes, downloads of classic AC/DC albums like “Back in Black” sell for $6.99 each.

Amazingly, $6.99 just so happens to be the price of a special deal just made available at Amazon.com. A download of “AC/DC: The Complete Collection,” which includes nearly 300 versions of songs from 27 of the band’s albums, including “Highway to Hell,” “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “Who Made Who,” and yes, “Back in Black” (among the top 5 best-selling albums of all time) can be purchased right now for only $6.99. “Dirt cheap” indeed!

This special deal popped up surprisingly on Halloween, then disappeared, and now it has resurfaced again. It’s unclear how long the monumental download will be available at the $6.99 price.

If it wasn’t already clear that the music business has changed dramatically in recent years, the new AC/DC deal should hammer that point home like an epic drum solo. We live in an era when it makes sense for U2 to give an album away for “free” (and get grief for it), and when it’s big news when a major artist like Taylor Swift decides that she no longer wants to (more or less) give her music away for free via streaming services such as Spotify.

If Swift and AC/DC have something in common—besides, you know, their mutual affection for wearing short shorts—it’s their steadfast belief in the importance of the album rather than the single song. One reason that AC/DC was reluctant to start selling music digitally (and why it still doesn’t make its music available for streaming services) is that the band believes the best way fans can enjoy its music is to listen to albums in their entirety, rather than hearing one song here and there.

“For us [the album is] the best way,” AC/DC guitarist Angus Young told Sky News in 2010, soon after the Beatles finally allowed their music to be downloaded on iTunes. “We are a band who started off with albums and that’s how we’ve always been. We always were a band that if you heard something [by AC/DC] on the radio, well, that’s only three minutes. Usually the best tracks were on the albums.”

Likewise, in a widely read Wall Street Journal op-ed last summer, Taylor Swift voiced strong opinions on the importance of the album in terms of musicians as both artists and businesspeople:

In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace. Piracy, file sharing and streaming have shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically, and every artist has handled this blow differently.

How will fans react in turn to the decisions by some major artists to not allow their music to be streamed? Will it help sell more albums? We’ll have to wait and see. If selling 27 albums for $6.99 doesn’t help boost a band’s music sales in a big way, probably nothing will.