To reach for the salad bar rather than the hamburger counter, or to turn away from merchandise in a shop window something difficult for most of us to change.

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While Ms. Tang and the rest of the lonely hearts club flock to the do-it-yourself furniture shop for its clean, homey environment, they pose something of a challenge for IKEA. They sit for hours in the cafeteria, leaving behind orange peels and egg shells they have picked off boiled eggs brought from home.

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Legend has it that back in the Roaring Twenties when 1, 200 people would attend nightly dinner dances into the wee hours of the night, then descend on the coffee shop for late breakfast, one asked executive chef Fred Schmidt to create something different.

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"A shop or brand can have a profile at aka-aki and you could 'meet' a shop, or a shop could tell who is passing it every morning and maybe offer that person a voucher for something, or tell them when they have special offers, " he said.

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He said that although the cup had no historical significance, "it was for charity and our customers will have something extra to enjoy viewing when I display them in the shop!"

BBC: NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Titanic cups raise small fortune