‘Cinnabon Mile End’ Is the April Fools’ Gag That Keeps On Giving

Traditionally, April Fools’ Day jokes are restricted to April 1, but one hyper-local gag about cinnamon bun chain Cinnabon opening in Mile End seems to have kept on spinning.

The joke went like this: a now-deleted Facebook page named “Cinnabon St-Viateur” surfaced on April 1, purporting to be a local page for the Atlanta-based giant that specializes in cinnamon-glazed dough-based confections. The page said that Cinnabon would be taking over the location of iconic café Le Cagibi, which is being forced out by a rent hike in the coming months. In short, it was a pitch-perfect joke that walked the ideal line between ridiculous and believable, right down to lines that sound exactly like an out-of-town chain trying to fit in.

In honour of the neighbourhood’s unique character and to pay respect to the former tenants of our location, Le Restaurant Cagibi, we will be offering special vegan Cinnabon® rolls.

A few people believed the gag: after all, Lululemon coming to Mile End wasn’t a joke, and rumours of Starbucks opening in the area have been somewhat continuous.

But it turned out to be a joke, ha-ha-ha, everybody wins, and then it appeared that a Cinnabon staffer appeared to step in to end the fun, sending the following message to Mark Slutsky, the writer-type who devised the joke.

The Facebook page quickly vanished, but over at Twitter, Le Cinnabon is still alive and kicking, with a continuing stream of joke tweets about cinnamon buns, Mile End, and various Montreal topics from Céline Dion to porn company Mindgeek.

But this raises numerous questions: why delete the Facebook due to possible legal action, but not the Twitter? Why does the Twitter account have a different tone and a different logo to the Facebook (to say nothing of the sloppier grammar)? And why did the Le Cinnabon Twitter account join the social network in December 2014, over three years earlier? Are there two separate Cinnabon Mile End jokesters?

Most of these questions aren’t worth answering — but here are some great tweets from the account.

• Le Cinnabon [Twitter]
• Rent Hikes Are Pushing Out Iconic Mile End Café Le Cagibi [EMTL]