Brad Tuttle

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.

A new government report is forecasting that the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in 2015 will be $2.94.

It seemed like quite a big deal when the national average for gasoline dipped under $3 recently. The price of the average gallon of regular had started with a $3 from late December 2010 all the way until the beginning of November 2014, when at long last it dropped below the mark. The national average as of Thursday, according to AAA, is $2.917, and some states, such as South Carolina and Tennessee, are averaging under $2.70.

According to a report this week from the federal Energy Information Administration, it looks like sub-$3 gas prices will be sticking around for a while. The report projects that gas prices will keep declining through the end of the year, with a national average of $2.80 expected for December. And the average for 2015 as a whole is being forecast at $2.94 per gallon.

The retail price of gasoline is tied to the wholesale price of crude oil, and due to bountiful supply and shrinking demand, the EIA is predicting that the cost of crude will average $77.75 per barrel next year, compared with $95 in 2014 and $97.91 in 2013. Accordingly, prices at the pump are expected to be cheaper in 2015—averaging $2.94, compared with $3.39 this year and $3.51 in 2013.

If the forecasts hold up, by December the national average will have dropped 90¢ from the 2014 high, and the 2015 average will be roughly 70¢ lower than that of 2012—when it was $3.63, the overall most expensive year (thus far) for gasoline.

If you've never flown on Virgin America—or never even heard of it—you're not alone. The carrier, which is always among the country's top-rated airlines, has an IPO set to take off this week.

For most of its existence, Virgin America, the U.S. offshoot of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has been the equivalent of a TV show that’s beloved by critics and viewers but has trouble attracting a large enough audience to be a true success. The airline, which began flying out of a San Francisco hub in 2007, has lost tons of money year after year, even while it routinely nabbed top honors among domestic airlines for having the best combination of service and amenities. Virgin America remains a beloved darling among travelers, who enjoy the leather seats, wi-fi, seatback screens with live TV, and power outlets available to all passengers on all planes. It was named the country’s best domestic airline by Travel and Leisure readers for 2014, marking the seventh year in a row Virgin America has held the top spot. The fares are often very good too, with deals like San Francisco to Los Angeles from $69 each way and San Francisco to Boston starting at $179.

Nonetheless, only a small portion of travelers actually have firsthand experience with the airline. For all of 2013, Virgin America carried a total of roughly 6.2 million passengers. Southwest Airlines, by contrast, was responsible for transporting 108 million passengers last year. Even though Virgin America has expanded its route network over the years, recently adding Dallas-Love to its roster of destinations as one example, the carrier still only serves 13 U.S. metropolitan areas. What’s more, many of its connections come up short in the convenience department. For instance, Virgin America has service to both Austin and Las Vegas, but if you want to book a flight between the two cities with the airline, you’ll have to fly by way of San Francisco.

There has been plenty of skepticism about whether or not Virgin America can have a successful run in the U.S. marketplace. “I’m surprised it has survived this long, given the huge losses accumulated to date,” Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Co., said in 2012. “I don’t really see a place in the market for Virgin America.”

And yet the airline is alive and apparently doing quite well today, with an IPO planned for this week. As Businessweek and others have noted, the timing of the public offering couldn’t be better: The Virgin America IPO is taking place at a high point for the airline business, with strong demand and cheap fuel prices helping carriers to pull in record profits. Speaking of which, after a long string of quarters noting loss after loss, Virgin America has been in the black of late as well, recording a net profit of $60.2 million through the first nine months of 2014, up from a loss of $4 million for the same period the year before.

In its planned IPO, Virgin America is expected to sell more than 13 million shares starting at a price of $21 to $24. Should investors buy in? That’s a gamble. Airline stocks have had an extraordinary run in 2014, but there’s no telling if the upward trajectory will continue. We just hope that at some point, more travelers get to fly on what sounds like a pretty terrific airline.

"New Black Friday" is the term being used by Walmart for its Black Friday promotions—which actually start on Thanksgiving and last for five days.

On Tuesday, Walmart held a press conference to introduce what it’s calling the “New Black Friday.” Per the ongoing retail trend, the Black Friday sales start on Thanksgiving Thursday, and they’re hardly limited to a single day. “This year, we’re blowing it out with five days of deals in store and online,” Walmart chief merchandising officer Duncan Mac Naughton said. “We’ll have crazy low prices on the gifts our customers want.”

First things first: Is there anything really “new” about Walmart launching Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving, or about having sales stretch from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday? On both accounts, the answer is no.

Last year, Walmart’s Black Friday included a staggered series of doorbuster deals, with some available at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving, others starting a couple hours later, and still others taking effect early on Friday morning. What’s more, Walmart and other retailers began trickling out pre-Black Friday sales the weekend before Thanksgiving if not earlier, plenty of other deals were available over the entire five-day Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday period, and the majority of these sale prices could be purchased online or in stores for the same exact price.

And guess what? This year, it’s essentially the same story. The hours have been tweaked for the 2014 version—special deals are available at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, then more starting at 6 a.m. the next morning—but it’s basically been the same plan since 2012.

On the one hand, spreading what are supposedly the best holiday sales out over five days—or, let’s face it, over the course of two full months—might make you wonder why it’s necessary to go shopping at all on a day traditionally devoted to family time rather than mall time. Walmart may hope that you physically go shopping in its stores on all five of those days, but that doesn’t mean you have to play along, especially not when the online option is available.

The traditional retail playbook for Black Friday featured a limited number of low-price “loss-leader” doorbuster deals that drew in the masses. Whether they were actually able to get hold of one of the few ultra-cheap items or not, these customers tended to shop for other merchandise while they were in the stores. Walmart has tried to eliminate some of the bait-and-switch involved in this tactic with a 1-Hour Guarantee, in which shoppers are assured they’ll get the doorbuster they want if they’re lined up at least one hour before the sale price is available. Yet overall, the strategy remains unchanged: Attract customers with what seem like amazing deals on select items, then cash in when these customers buy all sorts of things—some on sale, some at full price, and collectively very profitable.

With five days of deals, Walmart could have decided that its best doorbuster bargains would be available starting on Friday or Saturday—or any day other than Thanksgiving. But that’s not what the world’s biggest retailer has done. Like Target, Best Buy, and many others, Walmart is rolling out what seem to be its best deals on Thanksgiving itself, including a 50″ LED TV for $218 and kids’ “Frozen” pajamas for $4.50. There’s nothing stopping Walmart and other retailers from launching these kinds of sales on, say, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Instead, they’re going with Thanksgiving, and because many of the very best deals are available in-store only, consumers who want to take advantage can’t stay home with their families and make purchases in front of a screen of their choice.

On the other hand, the season’s best prices don’t necessarily pop up on Thanksgiving or Black Friday, and, with the exception of a relatively small number of in-store-only doorbusters, the vast majority of deals are indeed available for web shoppers. As a dealnews post pointed out:

Data from previous years has shown that up to 70% of in-store Black Friday deals were also available online for the same price — or less! Because online sites, namely Amazon, will price match even the hottest in-store offers from brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart, many feel pressure to release deals online as well.

The takeaway for consumers should be that it’s okay—more than okay—to stay home on Thanksgiving, and then to sleep in and stay home the following day as well. Yes, you might miss out on a select few deals by doing so. But hey, it’s really not that big of a deal.

Stores at one mall in upstate New York are being strong-armed into opening for business by 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Tenant retailers that don't get with the program will be fined.

Every day, the list of retailers and shopping centers opening up for “Black Friday” sales on Thanksgiving Day itself is growing. Despite the fact that Thanksgiving store hours don’t necessarily boost holiday season sales so much as displace them from one day to another, more and more retailers apparently feel compelled to open for business on the national holiday—often during prime dinner hours but sometimes much, much earlier than that. Toys R Us, for instance, is matching Best Buy and J.C. Penney with a 5 p.m. opening time on Thanksgiving—an hour earlier than Target and Macy’s—while RadioShack just announced that more than 3,000 of its stores will open at the freakishly unnecessary hour of 8 a.m.

In virtually all cases, retailers explain their decisions to open on Thanksgiving by pointing back at consumers—saying that shopping time on the holiday and “flexible” store hours are what today’s consumers demand. After all, the stores have a choice to not open on Thanksgiving, and that’s just what a couple dozen retailers have said they’ll do, often proudly proclaiming that they’re staying closed to allow their employees to spend the day relaxing with their families.

Yet at least in one case, a group of stores doesn’t really have much choice in the matter. Walden Galleria, a mall near Buffalo, N.Y., decided that this year, it would open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. That’s six hours earlier than last year, but still, other malls in the area are also opening at the earlier time.

What’s bound to bring Walden Galleria plenty of grief, however, is the heavy-handed way it is prodding tenant retailers into opening at 6 p.m.: They’re being threatened with fines if they don’t go along with the plan. It’s unclear how much the fine would be for failing to open by the assigned hour, but apparently the amount is substantial enough to compel some reluctant shop managers into coming to work that day.

“We’re just stuck following the rules, because if we didn’t, we’d be fined by the mall and being a small company, that’s substantial to us. We can’t just pay that. We have to stay open,” Shaun Deutsch, the manager of the mall’s Tee Shirt University store said, according to the local Time Warner Cable News station. “It’s been a lot different this year trying to find people to work. It’s not been easy. I’ve been forced to schedule myself because I can’t find anyone else, really, to help me out.”

The Boycott Shopping on Thanksgiving Day Facebook page took note of Walden Galleria’s nasty tactics and immediately placed the mall on its “Naughty” List—reserved for shopping outlets opening on Thanksgiving.

Why would we need a day devoted to buying stuff for yourself when that's what many American consumers do year-round?

In China, Nov. 11 (a.k.a. 11/11) is celebrated as Singles Day. The event originated as Bachelor’s Day in the 1990s, an anti-Valentine’s Day when those without significant others were encouraged to celebrate their non-attached status by purchasing gifts for themselves. Lately it has evolved into an all-consumers-welcomed price-slashing online shop-a-thon in China—something akin to the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend rolled into one day—and it’s dominated by Alibaba, China’s largest e-retailer.

Alibaba reportedly surpassed $9 billion in sales in 24 hours. For the sake of comparison, online sales in the U.S. reached $1.7 billion on Cyber Monday last year, and Black Friday 2013 e-commerce spending hit around $1.2 billion. (Sales rung up inside physical stores are far, far higher than online sales on Black Friday, of course.)

Leading up to Singles Day, some e-retailers and their public relations pros were trying to push the idea that Americans should embrace the day with Singles Day purchases of their own. Why should China have all the fun, after all? And Alibaba CEO Jack Ma told CNBC today he expects the U.S. and the rest of the world to join in Singles Day celebrations (by buying stuff–a lot of stuff) by 2019 if not sooner. At last check, slightly more than half of those voting in a CNBC poll said they would, in fact, celebrate Singles Day, compared with 37% who said nope, not gonna go there.

A potential U.S. version of Singles Day comes with complications, however, starting with the fact that Nov. 11 is already celebrated as Veterans Day. It’s one thing for retailers and restaurants to bump up store traffic and promote their brands with free food deals and Veterans Day sales on furniture, electronics, and clothes. It’s an entirely different proposition to supplant the day devoted to thanking our nation’s vets and active-duty military for their selfless service with one squarely focused on overtly selfish consumerism.

It’ll be “very, very difficult,” for retailers to get American consumers on board with Singles Day, Randy Allen, a Johnson Graduate School of Management professor, said to Businessweek. “People look at holidays that we’ve got and say, ‘Where would you fit another one in? Do I really want to have to buy gifts for another holiday? Is this really something that’s important to me?’ ”

The calendar is already full of fake holidays, many of them devoted to treating oneself—Splurge Day anyone? What’s more, the fake marketing holidays reach an especially frenzied pace around this time of year, what with “events” such as National Regifting Day and Gift Card Weekend fighting for our attention. It’s also worth reminding folks that “genuine” shopping phenomena like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are totally made-up holidays too, created for the express purpose of getting people to buy stuff.

Above all, let’s not pretend that any of these days are exclusively about gift giving. Sure, the traditional idea of holiday shopping is that you’re shopping for other people. But that’s hardly the only reason people hit the malls on Black Friday and browse online on Cyber Monday, ready to pounce on deals.

The self-gifting trend—buying yourself a “gift” during holiday shopping outings—has been popular for years. A National Retail Federation survey indicates that 6 in 10 consumers will engage in self-gifting during the 2014 winter holidays, the same proportion of self-gifters as in 2012.

Shoppers say they will spend an average of $126.88 on themselves this year, down from an estimated $134.77 during the 2013 winter holidays. Perhaps the decline comes as a result of consumers realizing they should be more focused on others rather than themselves during the holidays. Then again, maybe the shift is due to shoppers being more likely to self-gift year-round and having less reason to splurge on themselves specifically during the peak November-December season. In any event, it hardly seems urgent that a nation with a majority of self-gifters needs an individual day specifically focused on self-gifting.

In a David vs. Goliath battle over sandwich spread labeling, things could get messy.

Unilever, the food giant that owns the Hellmann’s brand of Real Mayonnaise, recently filed a lawsuit against Hampton Creek, a well-funded startup backed by the likes of Bill Gates. The upstart company is being accused of false advertising because its sandwich spread brand Just Mayo contains no eggs and is therefore not real mayonnaise.

The Food & Drug Administration stipulates that any product calling itself mayonnaise must contain one or more “egg yolk-containing ingredients,” and Just Mayo is made with yellow peas instead of eggs. The rules also require genuine mayonnaise to be at least 65% vegetable oil—which is why Kraft’s Miracle Whip, which doesn’t meet that standard, is not a mayonnaise and is technically classified as a salad dressing.

Unilever is demanding that Just Mayo change its labels, and it is seeking unspecified compensatory damages. The “harm is impossible to quantify because of the difficulty of measuring lost good will and sales” for Hellmann’s and other mayonnaise makers, the suit states. The suit claims that the “Just Mayo false name” has “caused consumer deception and serious, irreparable harm to Unilever,” and that it’s “part of a larger campaign and pattern of unfair competition by Hampton Creek to falsely promote Just Mayo spread as tasting better than, and being superior to, Best Foods and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.”

On its website, Just Mayo states its spread is “outrageously delicious, better for your body, for your wallet, and for the planet.” In recent months, the product—which is vegan but isn’t marketed overtly as such—has appeared on the shelves of national retailers such as Whole Foods, Costco, and Walmart.

Putting taste aside because that’s a subjective matter, how can Just Mayo label itself mayonnaise when it’s not mayonnaise? Well, actually Just Mayo never says that it is mayonnaise. The product is always referred to as “mayo,” not “mayonnaise.” Hampton Creek maintains that there’s a difference, that it never claimed the product was genuine mayonnaise, and that the lawsuit is the result of Unilever and Hellmann’s feeling threatened in the marketplace. “We’re competing directly with a company that hasn’t had real competition in decades,” Hampton Creek CEO Josh Tetrick told the Wall Street Journal. “These things happen.”

Andrew Zimmern, the celebrity chef and Travel Channel personality who is quoted calling Just Mayo a “must have” on the Hampton Creek website, has created a Change.org petition against Big Mayo, asking others to join his effort to get Unilever to “Stop Bullying Sustainable Food Companies.” The online petition, which urges Unilever to drop the lawsuit and “focus more on creating a better world rather than preventing others from trying to do so,” has already registered more than 15,000 signatures. Look for the movement to spread.

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.

Sure, there will be some great deals on Black Friday. But overall, the data indicates that the holiday season's best prices are to be found before Black Friday even arrives.

Black Friday, a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving, has traditionally been embraced as the kickoff of the holiday shopping season. But now that the season has been expanded dramatically by retailers, which began airing holiday ads in September, with Black Friday-type deals appearing as early as November 1 and plenty of stores open on Thanksgiving, the idea that Black Friday is the “start” of anything is silly. In fact, the idea that Black Friday is the season’s most important day for retailers is waning, and there’s a decent argument to be made that deal-seeking consumers should be done with their shopping by the time Black Friday rolls around.

The Wall Street Journal has examined retail pricing data from Adobe Systems, which shows that last year, the season’s biggest price drops took place the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the best overall prices were to be had not on Black Friday but the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This year, Adobe predicts that the season’s lowest prices will pop up on Thanksgiving itself, with an average discount of 24%. The deal-hunting experts at dealnews also anticipate that Thanksgiving will beat Black Friday and come out overall as the best day for low prices.

This isn’t to say that Black Friday won’t have some phenomenal bargains. Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Macy’s, and the rest of the field will surely roll out their share of doorbusters and huge one-day discounts. You’ll probably be able to scoop up off-brand TVs for a song, and the lucky few with the right combination of timing, endurance, and sharp elbows will assuredly snag other in-demand toys and electronics at deep discounts on Black Friday.

But they’ll have to battle traffic and crowds at the mall to do so. More importantly, based on the data presented above, it should be clear that Black Friday won’t necessarily have the best prices on everything. The pitfall shoppers should really try to avoid is heading to the mall on Black Friday for a few amazing doorbuster deals—and then sticking around and impulsively buying a bunch of other things at prices that are higher than you need to pay.

Combine that with the fact that the majority of sales on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the rest of the weekend are available online at the same prices, and that huge online sales are all but guaranteed for Cyber Monday at the start of the next week, and there’s considerable justification for staying away from the mall the entire time.

It may not be the most appealing idea, but there’s even some justification for getting a good portion of your holiday shopping done right now. The Wall Street Journal has been tracking prices of 10 top holiday gift items at Amazon and other major retailers, and what it found is that competitors are changing prices from day to day, sometimes dramatically so, and that some particularly good deals are appearing sooner than they normally do in the season. “This year retailers are trying to lengthen the season by dropping prices even earlier,” Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst of Adobe Digital Index, explained to the WSJ.

Dealnews agrees. “The truth is that the entire month of November will see blockbuster sales,” a post in late October explained. “So if you see the item you want at a price that suits your budget, by all means don’t wait to purchase that item later.”

Certainly, there’s no reason to feel like you must wait and physically go shopping on Black Friday.

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.”