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Barista to host National Scrabble Championship

To hone the spelling skills and promote love for Scrabble, Barista has introduced an eight city tournament in the country

Barista Lavazza has tied up with Mattel Toys to launch the first edition of Barista Lavazza Café Scrabble 2010. Through the event, the company plans to connect with its customers across eight cities in the country over a span of four weeks.

"We have these board games such as chess and scrabble available in our stores, which customers can play whenever they come into the stores. Through our internal data, we realised that scrabble happens to be the most popular game across all our stores and with thought, we approached Mattel and it agreed readily," says Saurabh Swarup, head, marketing and product development, Barista Coffee.

Barista to host National Scrabble Championship
The National Scrabble Tournament will take place in eight cities in India, including Delhi, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Mumbai and is open to all patrons of the store in the age group of 19-35 years, including students and professionals.

As for the reach of the event, Swarup tells afaqs! that a store, on an average, experiences 350-400 footfalls in day, "and there are about 40 stores in New Delhi, so in a day we reach almost 16,000 people."

The event is being promoted in-store through counter tops, table tent cards and standees. The company also has a website and a presence on Facebook, which are being utilised to spread the word. The event is also being promoted through Mattel partners such as Odyssey, Landmark, Crossword and Reliance TimeOut through standees at the stores.

The tournament kicked off from Delhi and will spread its wings to all the major cities. The call for entries began on May 21 and will go on till May 26. The winners from the city finals will compete against each other in the national championship.

Prizes will be given courtesy Tourism Malaysia and Mattel. Also, there are assured gifts for every participant. The winner of the national championship will win a trophy as well as a free trip to Malaysia.

The entry forms are designed as scrabble puzzles, which can be cracked while having a cup of coffee. Interested candidates can also register on the official Facebook page at facebook.com/BaristaLavazza. Entry forms are also available at all Barista Lavazza outlets.

Karun Gera, commercial director, Mattel, says, "Scrabble is the world's largest selling word game, with more than 150 million sets sold in 30 different languages across 121 countries."

Apart from scrabble, Mattel is also the owner of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels cars and Fisher-Price toy brand.

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