Celebrity Pop-Up

3 Houston coffee spots join national homage to the fabulous Gilmore Girls

A pop-up event in Houston will summon Lorelei and Rory Gilmore.

Photo courtesy of Gilmore Girls/CW

As a ramp-up to the Netflix revival of '00s TV show Gilmore Girls, three coffee shops in Houston will host one-day pop-ups in which they briefly recreate the spirit of Luke's Diner.

The so-called pop-ups will take place on October 5, as part of a national event where more than 200 diners across the country will give out free coffee from 7 am to noon, channeling the Gilmore Girls' set-piece.

The event seems to consist mainly of free coffee, with custom sleeves on the cups that share promotional info. Baristas will wear Luke's Diner aprons and T-shirts. Fans of the show can congregate and salivate over the imminent return of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which will premiere on Netflix on November 25. The entire series was released on Netflix in July.

The mere opportunity to go and get a cup of coffee at Luke's Diner, even a temporary one that is really only virtual, will be exciting. Plus, photo opp.

The Houston coffee shops participating include:

Bosta, on Binz Street near the Museum District
Honeymoon, downtown
The Nook Cafe, near the University of Houston

It's an unusual collection of shops that seems to be chosen mostly by their indie status, and by their location, with shops in key cities across the country. A total of 14 coffee shops in Texas will join the event.

According to one shop employee who asked not to be named, the stores were given a minimum amount of information about how the event would unfurl, and participating employees were required to sign nondisclosure agreements.

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BY THE NUMBERS

Houston maintains its top 3 position on ranking of cities that best attract biz

Photo via Getty Images

For the third year in a row, Houston ranked high on the list of major metros attracting new business.

According to a recent report, Houston is still one of the top cities in the United States for attracting new companies.

The ranking, which was researched and published by Site Selection Magazine, found that the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land region attracted 255 business projects last year. This put the metro in the third place of the list that analyzed larger regions.

It's the third year in third place for Houston, and the city had a year over year improvement in number of deals; 2021 reported 213 new business projects in Houston. In fact, the top three cities – Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, respectively — has remained the same for all three years. For 2022, the Chicago metro garnered 448 projects, while Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington reportedly had 426 projects.

The report also called out a recent statistic from Kastle Systems, which was based on building access control data. The stat found that among 10 major cities analyzed based on the week of February, Houston was one of three metros that had a returned-worker percentages higher than 50 percent.

According to the Greater Houston Partnership data, new business accounted for more than 50 percent of business announcements in 2022. GHP's data varied from Site Selection's due to a difference in reporting methods, but the organization's research identified 199 new business announcements in the Houston area in 2022.

The NBAs included new businesses, HQ announcements, and expansions. The GHP data included information about these deals' industry verticals — and the manufacturing sector accounted for almost a third of the total NBAs in 2022.

The GHP also rounded up a few of the most prominent deals reported in their data. According to the Partnership, more details about these NBAs include:

Orsted — an offshore wind developer from Denmark is expanding its presence in Texas by establishing a new office in The Woodlands. The move is expected to create up to 100 jobs in the region.
Syzygy Plasmonics — a Houston-based energy 2.0 company is expanding its operations to Pearland. The new location will serve as HQ, R&D, and manufacturing for its deep-decarbonization platform, creating up to 120 jobs.
Alfred Talke Logistic Services — a German logistics firm is establishing a new facility in the region, serving as its U.S. headquarters. This project represents a $25 million investment and will create 240 jobs.

Trevor Best, co-founder and CEO of Syzygy, first discussed the company's expansion last year on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

"What we're seeing is the market's appetite for our kind of technology — deep tech for decarbonization in energy and chemicals — is really high. If we want to meet global demand for our product, we need to get ready to scale," he says on the show.

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