It is either a sweet story or a shrewd marketing ploy. Either way, a tweet changed the fortunes of a Texas doughnut shop over the weekend.
A Twitter user named Billy By tweeted a plea to area customers Saturday, lamenting the lack of business at his father's new doughnut shop in Missouri City, KPRC reported.
The shop -- Billy's Donuts -- had recently opened, the television station reported. By posted a photo Saturday on Twitter of his "sad dad" behind a counter in the empty shop. "My dad is sad cause no one is coming to his new donut shop," By tweeted.
That changed in a hurry, as the tweet generated more than 529,000 likes and 250,000 retweets. The shop located just southwest of Houston was soon teeming with customers, KPRC reported.
On Sunday, By provided an update, tweeting from its official account, "We completely sold out of donuts and kolaches! You are all amazing. I can't thank everyone enough for coming out and supporting local businesses. This means so much to my family."
Even Twitter got into the act, tweeting "You donut want to miss out on Billy's and neither do we!"
Billy Donuts now has more than 52,000 followers on Instagram.
U.S. YouTube veteran Casey Neistat shared the post to his 1.9 million followers with the caption: "On my way," Newsweek reported.
Actor James Woods tweeted to his 2 million followers: "Come on, everybody. Let's do this."
Not all social media posters were convinced.
"Good marketing, Billy," one person tweeted. "Good wishes."
“Marketing 101,” tweeted another skeptic.
One poster named RedLatinos tweeted that By's father did not do the proper market analysis before opening the shop.
"With a majority of folks being more health conscious, perhaps he should've not primarily focused on donuts," he tweeted. "Also, doesn't help that he puts a donut shop next to a dentist office."
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