Garbanzo may be the baby of the list this year, but it’s not an amateur by any means. Under the leadership of Alon Mor, who spent eight years working with Panera Bread’s Ken Rosenthal, the Colorado-based chain has loads of industry knowledge.
There’s also the fact that launching a brand in the middle of the worst recession in decades can toughen up even the youngest of brands. “Everybody asks us how it is to operate in a recession environment,” Mor says. “I’ve always said, ‘We don’t know any better.’”
With 14 company-owned locations under its belt, the concept launched a franchise program earlier this year and plans to break into the D.C./Baltimore market over the next two years. Mor says deals are also in place for more than 10 additional markets—San Antonio being one—in the near future.
However, Mor says the brand, which celebrated its fifth birthday with a Kabobs launch this summer, wants to grow strategically, not quickly. “It’s about growing smart,” he explains. “We have no reason not to be on the same path as the other fast casuals.”
For some industry execs, a passion for food just isn’t enough. That’s why Boloco CEO John Pepper switched his focus to people—his people.
By offering progressive employee benefits—health and dental plans, matching 401(k)s, and transportation discounts, along with higher pay rates so employees can actually take advantage of these great offers—the Boston-based burrito chain has turned the golden rule on its head.
To apply that concept to consumers, it rewarded 15 years of loyalty by hosting an “18 Days of Free Burritos” event in February in partnership with the Life is Good organization, raising more than $27,000 for underprivileged children. The brand hosted another free burrito promotion in June to raise money for the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in New Hampshire. “It really isn’t about getting presents,” Pepper says about Boloco’s milestone, “but about giving presents.”
Cheesesteaks may be the unofficial sandwich of “The City of Brotherly Love,“ but thanks to California-based Philly’s Best, West Coast diners can have an authentic cheesesteak, too.
Founded in 1992 by husband-and-wife team Andrea and Bob Levey, the brand now boasts more than 25 locations, 18 of them franchised. The Philadelphia-bred couple aim to deliver a true Philly experience, from the genuine Amoroso rolls sourced straight from Philadelphia to the posters of Philly landmarks that adorn the walls and the Eagles games that air through the NFL season. “It’s not just food,” Andrea Levey says. “It’s really a feeling. It’s an experience.”
To celebrate 20 years, the company launched a “Hoagie Jam” promotion, offering hoagies for just $5 to fans through direct mail and Facebook. It’s also rolling out a line of Philly’s Fresh Neighborhood salads—named after areas in the Leveys’ home city—and introducing pastrami this month. “It’s exciting to give people a taste of home,” Bob Levey says.
For a brand that’s hitting the quarter-century mark with 60 units in tow, it’s hard to believe that, until five years ago, Tasti was basically roaming free. When the company was purchased in 2007, CEO Jim Amos says, “there was nothing. We had to hire the staff, we had to create the training and operating manuals, we had to build the franchising system.”
Since then, the dessert brand has been on the move, acquiring Planet Smoothie in 2011. In March, it signed an agreement for 30 new units in the Middle East and, in May, popped up in Walmarts around the country.
On September 7, Tasti will offer 25-cent cups and cones to celebrate what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg named “Tasti D-Lite Day.” “It’s a fun product,” Amos says, noting the brand’s cult following in Manhattan. “It puts a smile on people’s faces, and it’s great to be a part of.”
While many brands boast about menu variety, Freebirds has the numbers to back it up—2.2 trillion, in fact. That’s the amount of possible burrito combinations the brand’s fans can create from the range of Freebirds’ made-in-house ingredients.
“The whole idea is to celebrate this freedom of choice,” says Jeff Carl, chief marketing officer for the 80-unit, Texas-based chain. “Ours is explosive in the number of choices that you have.”
More customers can now cash in on this variety thanks to Freebirds’ first franchise deal with Tavistock Restaurants in March, which set out plans to open 27 units in Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.
One of life’s biggest dilemmas—cookies or cake—was laid to rest in June 1997, when Atlanta-based cookie and brownie brand Great American Cookies developed its iconic cookie cake.
While many flavor favorites, like Original Chocolate and Peanut Butter Supreme, have stood the test of time, brand director Dave Kaiser says it’s the company’s ever-expanding menu that keeps customers coming back for more. That’s why the brand introduced a Reese’s Peanut Butter brownie this year and brought back the popular Domino cookie, a dark chocolate cookie with white chocolate chunks.
But flavors aren’t the only thing on the dessert brand’s mind. With more than 300 locations in the U.S. and abroad, Great American Cookies has immediate plans to open stores in additional markets like Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Islands.
The chain celebrated its 35th birthday with the launch of its first-ever food truck in Houston and hosted “Super Cookie Cake Celebration” events at franchised locations.
In exchange for donations to nonprofit organizations, guests received a slice of giant cookie cake (below).
The 30-second TV spot has been a staple of food-industry advertisers for decades, but its time is running short. And quick serves need to switch up the marketing menu—before it’s too late.
Why? The average TV advertisement, which is made up of 23 seconds of brand message and about seven of value proposition, just doesn’t lock in customer loyalty the way it used to. In fact, even the term customer loyalty needs to go. That’s marketing speak that makes individual customers look like cattle.
Faced with distracted customers who have access to 1,000 lunch options, discount dinner deals, and brands barking at them from every direction, quick serves need to find a new way to personally connect with and engage customers one on one—away from all of the noise.
Welcome to the age of the socially integrated brand campaign. Here’s why it’s set to change everything we know about the marketing mix in the quick-service food industry.
Last year, space150’s client, International Dairy Queen, celebrated the 25th anniversary of the DQ Blizzard treat with a nationwide Blizzard Tour. We were tasked with helping drive attention for the program and creating customer traffic for franchise locations across the country. In these instances, TV typically becomes the dominant medium, but, as a brand that likes to try new strategies, DQ agreed to mix mass market TV with a social media strategy to tap into the brand’s legions of loyal fans.
Fast forward to the campaign: A TV spot introduced DQ fans to a fictional family, the Blizzmans. The story of the Blizzmans was then carried over to online, where the real customer engagement happened on the Web and at DQ restaurants. Customers were able to view online webisodes that developed the family’s story and were offered free treats at local events when the Blizzard Tour arrived in their towns. Fans were asked to RSVP on Facebook, where they could learn more about the Blizzmans’ story and follow the progress of the Blizzard tour on its way to their town.
You might say, “So what?” Well, we learned a critically important lesson 3 million times over: When quick serves really engage their customers, the rewards can be massive. Integrating social media into a mass-media program in a key way has helped the DQ Fan Club on Facebook grow from 600,000 to 3.2 Million, and DQ has smashed nearly every record they ever set just with stand-alone, mass-media advertising. It’s a new horizon of customer engagement.
Integrating social media into a mass-media program in a key way has helped the DQ Fan Club on Facebook grow from 600,000 to 3.2 Million.
So what should savvy quick-serve marketers and brand managers take away about the changing times? Quite simply, seize new marketing opportunities. Social media platforms and invested online communities of fans can now add real firepower to a traditional marketing campaign and provide a level of customer involvement, ongoing feedback, and dialogue about your brand that didn’t exist five years ago.
1. Go beyond TV: Your brand and restaurant’s success doesn’t start and end with TV. Take your content to new social media venues and let your customers get involved, interact with the content, and even create something new
2. Give fans a role: You may think your brand’s tweets, blogposts, and status updates are good, but they’re not nearly as good as what your fans have to say about you to their friends as they amplify your own marketing efforts
3. Engage fans (a lot): If you have a lot going on—events, promotions, discounts, and special deals—tell your customers about them, and often. So long as you have creative, fun, and valuable information they can value and use, it can be OK to post four, five, or even six times a day. It can help your brand grow quickly in the social world.
4. Stay smart and scrappy: You can use mostly free tools, like Facebook, Facebook Events, a Wordpress blog, and a YouTube account, to drive millions of impressions inexpensively and quickly. In the old days of the brand microsite, that would be a seven-figure investment.
5. Use social ads as growth catalysts: Paid media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube ads are a great catalyst in social media when combined with all of the above—but they don’t work in a vacuum. You can see substantial growth from a Facebook ad program, but it will only be a fraction of what your fans can drive if they are properly engaged and on board with your brand.
Keep these ingredients in mind when looking for ways to add flavor and sizzle to your marketing campaigns, and it’s entirely possible you’ll cut your promotional overhead and create a new army of brand-loyal fans to spread your word and stretch your marketing dollars.
Marcus Fischer is president of space150, a digital communications agency with offices in New York, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. The firm provides digital strategy, creative, and execution to clients including International Dairy Queen. Fischer can be reached at [email protected].