← All projects

National Dinner Tour

I put my number in a catalog. 30,000 people called.

Year
2004–05
Format
Year-long dinner tour
My role
Creator and dinner guest
Where
Across the United States
The Crate & Barrel catalog and the dinner invitation that appeared in it.
The Crate & Barrel catalog and the dinner invitation that appeared in it.

The invitation

While working on a Crate & Barrel photo shoot, I wrote “dinner w/ Marc” and my phone number on a whiteboard. It made it into the catalog.

What happened

Thirty thousand people called. I spent the next year crossing the country, having dinner with strangers.

Crate & Barrel hadn’t commissioned a dinner tour. I’d invited myself.

Impact

  • 30,000 calls from one line in a catalog mailed to millions
  • Covered by TODAY, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Inside Edition, Reuters, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times
  • People named me one of its 50 Hottest Bachelors; I went on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
  • Led to my signing with the William Morris Agency as its first digital client
National Dinner Tour