Without the promise of sweets, mouths would never have the patience to stay open during dentist appointments or closed during beekeeping demonstrations. Keep mouths copacetic with today's Groupon: for $5, you get $10 worth of Italian sweets and sips at Vero Coffee & Gelato, nestled in Mariano’s Fresh Market. Choose between the following locations: Arlington Heights or Vernon Hills.

Vero's menu silences the chatters of sweet teeth with sugar-laced treats such as Venetian-style fried dough, decadent hot and cold specialty drinks, and more than 60 flavors of homemade gelato and sorbet. Dessert definitions are challenged with bowls of frosty spaghetti and meatballs ($4.99), which feature noodle-shaped vanilla gelato festooned with coconut shavings, a strawberry topping, and two spherical scoops of chocolate ice cream. Mouths can celebrate the union of divergent temperatures as they nibble through the warm fried-dough base and unwarm gelato ceiling of the hot-and-cold sundae dough ($5.99), or revel wholly in frozen flavors with a fresh-squeezed lemon shaky ($2.49), both refreshing and sweet, like a school teacher who dispenses discipline with a super soaker. Pep-deficient steps might opt for one of Vero’s coffee-based libations, such as a black eye ($2.49 for a single) that slugs exhaustion with a one-two punch of fresh coffee and two espresso shots.