By Bri Corley

Cornerstone Grill & Loft is using their weekly “Big Ass Drafts” deal to raise money for the Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization by releasing a limited run of their classic 25 ounce mugs.

Every Sunday, Cornerstone sells 25 ounce mugs to fill with any of their draft beers for only $4. The design of these mugs changes every so often, with the one constant being the bold Cornerstone sticker across the front. However, to general manager Brian Lambert, switching up the classic design is part of the fun, and when he decided to do pink mugs by chance, the pieces of a successful fuindraiser just fell into place.

“For the past six or seven years, I’ve changed up the different colors and done different color schemes. We have to do the mugs one or two months in advance, so I was just looking back through my records to see what color I hadn’t chosen in a while and, just by chance, I chose pink,” said Lambert.

“And then,” he continued, “someone from a student group happened to mention something about doing philanthropy about breast cancer awareness for the month of October and I thought, ‘Wait a second, we’re doing pink mugs. This could work.’ It didn’t even dawn on me when I orded them.”

According to Lambert, they sold out of over 100 pink mugs the first Sunday after they debuted the design on their Instagram. They had to do an instant restock to keep up with the demand. 

The mugs, with the Cornerstone logo and an awareness ribbon in bright pink, retail for $8 each. Lambert said that since this type of promotion is a new endeavor for the bar, they are donating $1 for each mug sold.

“We didn’t change the price of our mugs for this promotion,” said Lambert. “So we thought $1 would be an even amount since it’s our first time doing something like this. We work a lot with groups on campus that do philanthropy events and we will donate food or gift cards or host it so that they can do the fundraising, but this is our first time doing it in-house for us.” 

This may just be a beta test for the bar, but Lambert is hopeful of the possibilites that this could lead to for future philanthropic efforts. 

“We are excited to see how this goes,” he said. “We want to do something more to help out and give back to the community. This is our initial try and it’s been pretty successful so far, so we are excited for our future possibilities.”

Featured Photo Credit: Courtesy of Cornerstone Grill & Loft’s Facebook page.

Bri Corley is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at briacorley@gmail.com