Little Caesars pays off their NCAA Basketball upset promise with free lunch combo on Monday April 2, and, no surprise, lines were around the building at all area Kalamazoo restaurant locations.

The location pictured above is on Portage Street in the Edison neighborhood. We spot-checked other locations around the area and found similar long lines at Little Caesars on Gull Road, Cork and Westnedge and South Westnedge in Portage.

The chain promised a free lunch should a #16 seed upset a #1 in the 2018 NCAA men's basketball tournament - a feat that had never been accomplished.

Though the free lunch promotion is costing Little Caesars many millions of dollars, they wont' say exactly how much, they're expecting to more that recoup that cost in the publicity the free lunch promotion has brought to the chain.

Brandon told us on Facebook that the lunch was worth the wait and "'much bigger than expected. That long line only took 10 min."

Stephanie found another benefit to the free lunch, "it wasn’t that long of a wait and I didn’t have to make lunch."

Anne was lucky enough to be 5th in line at the Sturgis location and got her lunch in a breeze. However, in Niles, Gordon told us he had to wait for 40 minutes.

Ben attempted to get lunch at the North Park Street location in Kalamazoo and found the doors locked as the promotion ended:

Was a bummer that the one on park st locked their door at 1pm. I wasn't aware of the promotion and was going to be a paying customer. My lunch is at 1pm so I'll now either be not eating or back to my job late.

Here was Denise's experience in Portage:

Went to the one on Centre in Woodbridge. Waited in line
about 25 minutes. They handed out coupons to everyone who was in line by 1:00 & honored them. They ran out of lunch size pizza. So we got a normal large size minus the pop. They were so nice accommodating everyone!
Great job Little Caesars

Some Little Casears Locations Run Out of Food

Holly told us on Facebook,

The Battle Creek location in Verona in Battle Creek was sold out at 12:35pm. A little disappointing. Looked like they were handing out coupons for a future visit but I didn't wait in line just for that.

A similar story from the Thumb where the Huron Daily Tribute reported that the Little Casears in Bad Axe ran out of supplies a little after 12.

Here's how the lines looked in the Detroit area as reported by WXYZ,

BONUS VIDEO - When Little Caesars Did Breakfast

Remember the Pizzini? Likely not, the Little Caesars test product was available only in a few select restaurants.

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