January, 2004
Bongo Java became world famous in December 1996 for the discovery of a cinnamon bun that many believe looks like Mother Teresa. The Music City Miracle was featured in media outlets as diverse as Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Paul Harvey, David Letterman and (so we've been told) a Calcutta newspaper. The bun has been preserved and is on continuous display at Bongo Java.

A Legend Begins

The NunBun quickly become a Nashville legend complete with the customary tall tales, exaggerations and mis-information. Despite popular opinion, the NunBun didn't make the Bongo Java owners rich and our actions didn't really upset Mother Teresa. We certainly got more publicity than we ever deserved and for a short time we were incredibly busy. Mother Teresa and her attorney also did contact us. In the end, though, all parties were relatively pleased with the outcome and certainly no one changed their standard of living.

Nothing about the NunBun was planned and very little was done to spread the word. Some have accused us of planning the whole thing. But come on. Do you really think a bunch of us sat in room brainstorming about how we could possibly become famous and decided that faking the discovery of a cinnamon bun that looked like Mother Teresa was 1) a good idea and 2) would lead to David Letterman and Paul Schaffer doing a five minute song and dance routine about America being great because we can find pastries that look like famous people?

One since fired Nashville radio talk show host did say he thought it was unseemly that a coffeehouse with a Jewish owner would make money off Mother Teresa. But he was basically a jerk and his firing a few months later for saying other crap about someone else proved his credibility.

Admittedly we did make a few phone calls to generate publicity about the bun. But these calls were made way after the bun had become an inside phenomenon amongst our customers.

Origins of the NunBun

The bun was actually discovered on October 15, 1996 – more than two months before the first bit of media attention. Store manager Ryan Finney made the discovery when he innocently was about to eat breakfast at about 6:45 am before the store opened. Something made Ryan look at the pastry before he ate it and that's when the discovery was made. He waited patiently until 7:00am when the next employee came in and then hurriedly pushed the bun in front of Todd Truly's face and said "What does this look like?" A barely awake and very surprised Todd replied "Mother Teresa." The same test on the first few customers who came in that day confirmed the "miracle."

The bun quickly became a store legend. Regular customers would bring their friends and family and ask to see the bun. Not knowing the importance of what we had at this time, the bun was preserved simply by keeping it in the freezer. About a month later, Todd and fellow employee Russ McGarry teamed with a local filmmaker (Michael McNammara) to make a short "documentary" about the bun featuring many of the Bongo Java staff and regulars.

Even the incredibly popularity of the documentary didn't turn the NunBun into the phenomenon it is today. The film played to packed houses all night long. The 72 t-shirts and 100 prayer card/bookmarks made up to mark the occasion sold out during the initial invitation only screening. Customers demand kept the film running almost continuously for the next three days. But still the "miracle" didn't get any publicity.

The media picks it up

The film's success did get Bongo Java owner Bob Bernstein off his press relations butt. The former reporter called several acquaintances in the media business – a few who were even regular customers -- begging them to write about the NunBun. Even with these not-so-great connections, nobody wrote anything about the miracle. We learned much later that the story got discussed several times in the newsroom of The Tennessean but none of the reporters wanted to write such a silly story. The first media outlet that agreed to publish the story was the tabloid The Sun.

However, the daily Tennessean actually beat the weekly tabloid to press. The NunBun was featured on the front page of the Tennessean on the Saturday before Christmas – traditionally the slowest news day of the year. From that one story, the NunBun went world wide almost instantly.

Publicity started locally but took off worldwide very quickly. All three local TV networks sent out news crews the day the article appeared. One of those stories got picked up by CNN. On Monday the story was in USA Today, which helped generate calls from drive time radio disc jockeys across the country. On Tuesday a reporter from Reuters News Service came by for an interview, which helped make this a world-wide story. Soon calls were coming in from BBC radio, stations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The Bongo Java staff thought they hit the Big Time when on Sunday after the CNN report a Chicago DJ called and scheduled an interview for Monday morning. Bob and Todd listened in on extension phones as Russ (chosen because he's from Chicago and because he's a former stand up comic) did the phone interview. Bob and Todd's jealousy quickly went away as the two phone lines at the store rang non stop. DJs across the country wanted to talk about the NunBun. Todd and Russ handled the phones at one store. Bob went to the other store where the manager reported there being 65 messages on the answering machine by 7 am.

The publicity only slowed down because of New Years. We estimate that Bob, Todd and Russ each did about 100 interviews that first week and probably another 100 the week after New Years. First the East Coast morning DJs would call. Then it was radio stations in the Midwest followed eventually by those on the West Coast. A quick break for lunch. And then the phones would ring from DJs doing evening drive time on the East Coast, then the Midwest then the West coast and then from oversees. This happened day after day for a couple of weeks.

The national TV shows also started calling. The NunBun was featured on such shows as Prime Time Country, Strange Universe and joked about by Letterman and Jay Leno. Other shows such as Mad About You, Homicide and The Nanny made references to the cinnamon bun that looked like Mother Teresa.

We even managed to quickly throw up a web site. The site went live on January 1, 1997 complete with a morph that turned a picture of Mother Teresa into the NunBun and then back again. This site generated one million hits in 10 days. For those who don't know remember, in 1997 one million hits was a darn big deal.

Our 15 minutes of fame lasted about two weeks. Then everything got quiet. The pilgrimages to the store slowed down and the sales of t-shirts and prayer cards/book marks came to a stand still.

Prank calls, and Mother Theresa

Then something that seemed like a joke during the media frenzy proved to be real and sparked a second wave of publicity. During he fury of DJ interviews we got all sorts of prank calls. At first we fell for them. After a few we became darn skeptical. After waiting on hold for Dan Rather to realize it was only a DJ doing a bad impression of the newscaster and after discovering Howard Stern wasn't really on the phone you can imagine we were pretty darn suspicious when some guy called claiming to be Mother Teresa's attorney. He seemed to understand. He said he'd call back in a few days when things calmed down.

The caller proved to be Mother Teresa's attorney. In a very nice and reasonable way he explained to us his problem with us marketing NunBun merchandise. He assured us that Mother Teresa had a great sense of humor and enjoyed hearing about the bun that looked like her. However, she didn't like it that we printed "The Mother Teresa Bun" on the back of our t-shirts and on our prayer card/book marks. He went even further and said that he didn't think we should be using pictures of the bun on our merchandise because it was her image. She even sent us a letter.

Bob quickly called his attorney who suggested hiring an expert in intellectual property law and at $250 an hour whatever profits from merchandise sales that weren't eaten away by developing a web site were spent on legal fees.

The legal expert agreed that we needed to stop using the words "Mother Teresa Cinnamon Bun" but he assured us that we had every right to use the image of the bun. Legally the bun wasn't Mother Teresa's image; basically it was just a pastry that many people believed looked like her. Actually some people still insisted it looked more like Jimmy Durante or one of the Seven Dwarfs. If Mother Teresa was going to claim the bun was actually her image then she was going to have to argue and prove that this bun truly was a miracle.

We took the lawyer's advice and quickly adopted and even trademarked two names: NunBun and Immaculate Confection. We continued to print the image of the bun with these new slogans and felt perfectly fine legally and morally about our actions.

The media frenzy started all over again. The legal argument became harder to make when the public learned we received a letter directly from Mother Teresa. The letter pretty much re-iterated what the attorney said: she didn't mind the bun itself but she didn't want us making money off her name or image.

Mother Teresa's letter started our second 15 minutes of fame. The newspaper reporters, TV crews and DJ calls started all over again. The Big Time this time was a call from the producers of CNN's Burden of Proof. They wanted us to debate Mother Teresa's attorney on the show.

Mother Teresa's letter played badly in the press. We went from the fun guys with this bun to bad people who didn't respect Mother Teresa. Our regular customers (and most of our family members) understood that we really weren't doing anything illegal, immoral or ill advised. More importantly, we were barely doing anything against Mother Teresa's wishes. Again, she thought the bun was funny and didn't care if it stayed on display. She just wanted us to stop selling merchandise that displayed what she strangely claimed was her image.

Our legal argument proved hard to explain. Even being a bit media savvy proved to be no match for the question "why are you doing something that Mother Teresa (implied "a living saint") asked you not to do?" So despite having an owner who was a former reporter, a true believer in the First Amendment and a true rebel from way back, Bongo Java decided to at least temporarily back down.

"No More Mr. Bad Guy" was the front page headline when we announced we'd temporarily halt sales while we discussed the matter with Mother Teresa's attorney.

At the end, all is forgiven

Discussions with Mother Teresa's attorney proved fruitful. Away from the cameras and the news media both sides understood each other and the strength of each other's arguments: one side had Mother Teresa's clean image; the other had the law. With that in mind, Bongo Java and Mother Teresa reached a compromise before she died. The result was that Bongo Java would not use Mother Teresa's name or the term "Immaculate Confection" to market the bun or on any merchandise. In return, Mother Teresa would not object to Bongo Java selling at its store only a limited amount of merchandise with the image of the bun and/or the term NunBun. Thus, we cannot sell NunBun merchandise on the web or via phone. If you want NunBun gear, you gotta come to Bongo!

To prove Mother Teresa's sense of humor and her enjoyment of the bun, her attorney told us the following story. He met with her and her replacement a week before she died. They all knew she was dying and they wanted to clear up a few urgent matters – one crazily enough was the NunBun. After he explained the agreement worked out with Bongo Java and asked for her approval, Mother Teresa looked at her replacement and said "You tell those guys to find a cinnamon bun that looks like her."

End of story.

BongoJava