The other day a friend stopped by and commented that her grandson was a real whiner.

I jokingly suggested that instead of taking him to the beach tomorrow, to take him to the whinery.

On the heals of this brief incident, former Republican Senator Phil Gramm, economic advisor to John McCain, said the most powerful people in the world are true whiners.  He claims there is a mental depression out there and this results in a mental recession.

Now McCain distanced himself from this comment politically.

But realistically thinking about this, we do have a lot of whiners — from children to senior citizens and in-between.  And it seems that once a whiner always a whiner.

This got me to thinking about this phenomenon and what kind of business could be spawned from this trend of being a nation of whiners.

There is a difference between whiners and winners.  You see the winner takes full responsibility for their results in life while the whiner blames it all on others.

Because the nation probably has more losers than winners it came to mind that we could open up a franchise of Whineries.

We could have kiddy whineries, teenage whineries, adult whineries and senior citizen whineries.

It’s a themematic business because the demographics exist in each segment of our population.

And, in order to maintain a flow of customers we could cultivate our early audience K through 12.

We would begin with the kiddy winery where we would have toys, games and park-like apparatuses, but it would be designed so there would be few that children would like.  And those that they like would be in constant demand so others would have something to whine about.

We would have snacks and soft drinks some of which they like, but most which they dislike, and the counselors working with the children would not be responsive to their whining needs.

It would be like a whinery camp where parents could drop off the kids for a few hours of whining, so they got it all out of their systems to ensure a pleasant evening with their parents. 

This would continue through the teenage years with some adaptation to there changing whinery needs. This grass root effort would groom the customers for the adult whinery club and the senior citizen whinery.

When joining the adult whinery it would be a club-like setting meeting all the tastes of whinery afficionados.  First class liquor, wine, hors d’oeuvres.  There would be labeled sections where the whiners could go to have cocktails and whine about politics, the economy, global warming, wars, healthcare, energy, their husbands or wives — a place to relive their childhood as an adult.

Now for the senior citizen whinery club we would bring back some of the frustration of the kiddy whinery, for after all at this stage they would most likely be tired of re-hashing all of what they whined about in their adult whinery years.  At this point we would spring upon them at unsuspecting times the late-bird special and not allow any coupon clipping, and charge higher prices.  It would provide a purpose in their later years, something to pump up the adrenaline.

This really seems to be a business with ready made customers.  I can see franchises all over the world. I think the first franchise should be in Washington DC.  I’m thinking about offering the first opportunity to Phill Gramm and see if he might get some further funding from Fannie Mae.