Case History: Moe's Southwest Grill

Local Marketing Program Development and Execution

CONCEPT: INFLUENCER MARKETING

HARNESSING LOCAL NON-PAID INFLUENCERS TO DRIVE IN NEW CUSTOMERS

A Fast Casual Restaurant Franchise Success

With 500+ locations, a fast-casual restaurant chain has 500+ neighborhoods that they serve. Now imagine that the franchise owners and/or the GMs of each of those units could do just one easy, simple, low-cost promotion to drive in more traffic. The objective of this project was to test a number of different local marketing tactics and take those that are proven to generate new sales, scalable and would be easy to implement by the local management in just one or two hours a week.

METHODOLOGY:

Local Store Marketing (LSM) That's Scalable

We worked on a weekly basis with 26 stores in four different markets. After attending a custom LSM seminar and creating their own LSM marketing programs, the GMs receive weekly phone calls to discuss local marketing opportunities and set goals for the following week. These were followed up with email summaries of those calls for reinforcement and documentation. All promotions were tracked on an excel spreadsheet including the number of pieces distributed, total redemptions, and the number of first-time visitors.

To help prepare for the program and to ensure that any marketing suggestions I made were compatible with the operation, I took a week-long GM operation training. I can wrap a mean burrito as a result!

RESULTS:

After nine months six different tactics were identified to be scale-able to the rest of the system and provide potential new sales. A revised LSM seminar was created containing these six tactics along with templates for the easy production of promo pieces. The sales number of the 26 test units were then compared with a control group of like stores. The test group's average increase in top-line sales was nearly 5% over the control group, with some stores showing upwards of 31% increases.

(ABOVE) Excerpts from the Power Point used in training the GMs and Franchisees during the roll out phase. (BELOW) The comprehensive workbook used to customize the plan for their unit and community.

(LEFT) I went through the franchise/GM operations training. This insured that any promotions I suggested would be compatible operationally. Cleaning the bathroom was one key task I mastered! (RIGHT) Customer counts through the roof with tons of first timers attending a "blow out" promotion.

"I had the privilege of working with Jeff when I hired the street fighting team to assist Moe's Southwest Grill, a 430-unit fast-casual restaurant chain. Jeff's innovative approach to LSM and local marketing tactics specifically designed for an individual location (or market) was incredibly creative, fun to execute, extremely targeted and highly-impactful. More than that, Jeff was a pleasure to work with, developed a great relationship with our franchisees and restaurants and held detailed weekly calls to ensure that all questions were answered and everyone stayed on track. He became a valued member of my team and executed the program in a completely turnkey manner. I'd highly recommend Jeff, either for a marketing position within a company."

Joel Bulger, Chief Marketing Officer

Johnny Rockets