You won’t believe what this Toronto coffee shop did to get Ryan Gosling in the door

In a Pinocchio-esque turn of events, Joelle Murray, owner of east-end Toronto coffee joint Grinder Coffee, launched an aggressive social media campaign to turn her cardboard cutout of Canadian cutie Ryan Gosling into the real thing. Even the city’s mayor John Tory joined Murray in her mission to try and woo the elusive Gos away from TIFF festivities ­– where he’s promoting Neil Armstrong biopic First Man – and into her doorways:

Murray made a daily ritual of posing and posting with her false idol with the hashtag #RyanNeedsGrinder, hoping for the One True Gos to shine his light upon the coffee shop with his divine presence:

Murray’s nephew, under the twitter handle @etiiienne, said of his aunt: “She’s dealt with a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood, a flashy coffee chain opening up shop across the street, and the death of her business partner, all in the span of three years. But she never waivers.” Whether it was karma, her cardboard cutout campaign, or both, Murray’s wishes came true ten days into her campaign when a flesh-and-blood manifestation of her favourite Ontarian showed up at Grinder:

Gosling magically appeared at Grinder Coffee for a couple of minutes to spread his love and charm, with Murray gushing of the experience: “It was a lovely feeling. He was very well-spoken, a wonderful Canadian boy with very good manners.”

Murray’s Gos-centric campaign follows a similar one from last year that involved the café owner attempting to get Idris Elba to pay them a visit – and though Elba was an unfortunate no-show, Murray seems to have moved on – “Take that [Idris Elba], your loss,” she captioned her picture with Gosling.