This is the hilarious moment hungry customers were caught busting out 'silly dance' moves in a bid to bag some free grub from a bagel shop. Shoulder shimmies, bum wiggles and even the robot were some of the shapes thrown by shoppers at NYC-style bagel shop Bagels and Schmear last weekend.
In the 20-second clip, a member of staff can be seen placing a sign in the window advertising their challenge before it cuts to funny clips of customers dancing. The dancing diners were competing for the chance to bag some free 'bagel chips' - thin slices of bread sprinkled with olive oil and sea salt and cooked in the oven until crispy.
And it seems their dance moves passed the vibe check as founder of Bagels and Schmear Francesca Goldhill who dished out more than 50 portions to delighted customers. The sign read: "Do a silly dance walking in - If we like it, free bagel chips on us."
Francesca, 27, said: "I saw a gas station in America had done it on TikTok and it just made me laugh and put a smile on my face and I wanted to try it out.
"I think life is all a bit too serious at the moment and making people laugh is so important. I just thought 'why not do it?' so I put up the sign and I wasn’t let down.
"All the staff working absolutely loved it. My whole team engaged with the customers coming in and it made my team happy as well. The customers that came in were a mixture of regulars and new people.
"It was just a good vibe and the smile it put on all the customer’s faces will definitely make the new customers come back in for sure. The customers had the biggest smiles on their faces and it was such a small gesture, but a lot of fun.
“If you look at all the people in the videos of people coming in, there was always one person who was fully up for it and the other person looked confused and wondering what was going on."
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Business owner Francesca said that Bagels and Schmear was a no-waste bakery, meaning that leftover bagels are transformed into 'bagel chips' the following day.
Francesca said: "Our bakery is a no-wastage bakery. Any bagels we don’t sell in a day we slice them up into thin rounds, sprinkle them with a little bit of olive oil and sea salt and heat them up in the oven to make bagel chips.
"This is what we were giving out in return for a silly dance."
Bagels and Schmear posted the video on TikTok where it went viral, racking up more than 14.7 million views. Social media users flooded the clip with comments praising the bakery's decision to do the challenge.
One wrote: "You can't put a price on adding some happiness to someone's day." Another joked: "This challenge is proof people read signs and deliberately just ignore the ones they don’t like."
One commented: "I'd be on the floor Magic Mike-style if it were for a bagel." After the success of the silly dance challenge on the first day, the bakery kept the sign up all weekend.
Bagels and Schmear now plan to host a similar challenge every month to put a smile on their customers' faces. Francesca said: "It was so lovely to see it blow up on TikTok as the customers' dancing made me laugh so much.
"It was so nice to see all the comments like 'this is so wholesome' and 'this has put a massive smile on my face'. It has just done the job that I wanted it to do - making people laugh and smile.
"We put the sign up on the Saturday and we had so much fun on this day, we decided to keep the sign up all weekend. We definitely will be doing it again and maybe make it a monthly thing."
