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30 Restaurant Promotions That Worked

restaurant promotions that worked

With the advent of the Internet and a customer base who cannot remember a time before Google, foodservice operators are learning that they need effective restaurant promotions that can hold their own in an industry that is becoming more competitive by the day.

Nowadays, to succeed in the restaurant industry, it is imperative that restaurant marketing engages directly with guests. Consumers vote with their dollars — and good branding can help them feel as if they’re investing in something, rather than just buying a product.

Here we compiled 30 restaurant promotion ideas that reached out to guests in unique and successful ways (and share some statistics associated with the campaign results) — and also dig into some restaurant promotion fails that ended up costing chains more than they ever would’ve expected.

1. McDonald’s Promotions: The BTS Exclusive Meal (the Philippines and South Korea)

McDonald’s Philippines launched an exclusive BTS Meal, named after the South Korean pop boy band “BTS” (with 40 million fans globally). The band chose limited edition sauces with cajun and sweet chili to be included with 10 chicken McNuggets.

In the Philippines, the meal was sold for $5.15. The Philippine fans were even saving the packaging wrappers (unique BTS color, purple), and some framed and laminated the logos.

This is an especially effective marketing promotion idea for restaurants from an operational point of view, as it was effectively repurposing existing items and did not add any complexity to the menu.

Results:

2. Starbucks Promotions: Loyalty Rewards Program

Starbucks rewards its customers with star balances or points on its mobile app that can be exchanged for free espresso shots, pastries, and merchandise. The coffee chain also gives incentives with hot happy hour deals. So many customers store money on the Starbucks app that the chain has digital currency stored that outpaces some major world banks.

Results:

3. Rolled-up Rims Ramps Up Tim Horton’s Sales

In 1986, Tim Horton’s was a relatively unknown brand looking to reach new guests and increase sales. In conjunction with their cup manufacturer, Tim Horton’s launched their “Roll Up the Rim” campaign where guests can win prizes ranging from donuts to cars by finding a message hidden under the rim of their coffee cup.

Result:

4. St. Pete Brasserie Has Prayers Answered through Facebook

St. Pete Brasserie in Florida was on the verge of closure. Desperate for revenue, they turned to Facebook and posted a restaurant promotion in the form of a plea to their fans asking for help in a time of crisis.

Result:

5. A Tastemaker Calls, Morton’s Delivers

Peter Shankman’s tongue-in-cheek tweet to Morton’s Steakhouse was met with an unexpected reply: dinner waiting for him as he arrived at the airport. For the price of a steak dinner, Morton’s garnered tons of publicity for this smart social media restaurant promotion.

Result:

6. Butter Lane Bakery: Baking Up Buzz with Class

While many bakeries took to Groupon to sell their goods (we are not often fans of discount-driven promotions), Butter Lane Bakery offered customers an experience to share a baking class with family and friends in a professional kitchen as a restaurant promotion.

(https://www.butterlane.com/event-registration/)

Result:

7. Ted’s Montana Grill Sweepstakes Sweeps Up Fans

Building on the announcement that Ted’s Montana Grill was voted the #1 burger in America by DigitalCity.com readers, Ted’s set up a social media contest. Customers submitted their photos and videos to enter for a chance to win a Toyota Prius, all-expense-paid trip to Montana, or a year’s worth of Ted’s burgers.

Result:

8. Restaurant Promotions Leveraging Foursquare

Looking to increase revenue, Angelo & Maxie’s teamed up with Foursquare to drive traffic. They offered a free dessert with every check-in and purchase of an entrée.

Result:

9. Burger King’s Creative Restaurant Promotion: Detouring McDonald’s Customers

Burger King developed an app that unlocks when users reach 600 feet radius of a McDonald’s restaurant. The app users would get an automatic coupon for a 1-cent Whopper the moment they enter the radius. Shows how restaurant marketing promotions can get creative in the use of technology. 

Results

10. Einstein Bros. Bagels Increases ‘Like’-ability With Facebook Offer

Einstein Bros. Bagels saw their Facebook fan list stagnate. To reach new fans they tried a restaurant promotion that offered a certificate for a free bagel and shmear to anyone who “liked” their page on Facebook. “Be my friend, get a free bagel!” was the message Einstein Bros. Bagels promoted, and the giveaway increased its Facebook fan count from a measly 4,700 to a massive 336,000-plus in the three days following its launch.

Result:

11. Burger King’s ‘Subservient Chicken’ Serves Up Buzz

To promote Burger King’s new TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich, Burger King launched the “Subservient Chicken” website where customers could interact with a chicken trapped in an apartment.

Result:

12. Chipotle Restaurant Promotions

Customers are becoming more aware of what they eat, so Chipotle developed a restaurant promotion that distinguished the quality of their products over their competition. They created a two-minute short film called “Back to the Start”, featuring a song by Willie Nelson, which highlights the problems with industrial farms and Chipotle’s dedication to local, healthful ingredients. The film aired in the 2012 Grammy’s with a huge reception.

Result:

13. Jollibee Promotions: Touching Commercials

Jollibee is known for its heartfelt touching commercials. The short films “Vow”, “Crush” and “Date” had millions of views only a few hours after upload and boosted sales, especially for signature items.

Results

14. Friend or Foe: Burger King Demands Facebook Sacrifices

To channel the energy of social media into their restaurants, Burger King created an app that challenged fans to delete 10 people from their “Friends List” in exchange for a free Whopper. The campaign not only drove customers into restaurants, but also provided metrics such as coupon redemption, up-sell and take-rate, and ROI.

Result:

15. Wendy’s ‘Poutitions’ for Dominance

A surge in poutine popularity among Canadians inspired Wendy’s mock petition campaign. “Make Poutine Our National Dish” read t-shirts, buttons, and lawn signs. A YouTube video and television commercials encouraged viewers to sign the “Poutition”.

Result:

16. Subway’s Promotions: $5 Footlong Subs

The now-famous “5 … 5 … 5 dollar footlong” was only supposed to last for a month — but Subway’s promotion ended up going on for several years. The first phase launched in 2013 and it’s resurfaced at least twice since. (While an effective promotion, this pricing strategy has gotten the chain into some trouble from a cost-management side of things.)

Results

17. ‘Finger Cooking’: Boston Pizza Answers Lazy Chefs’ Prayers

Boston Pizza International wanted to increase their take-out and delivery business without cannibalizing in-store sales. Thus, “Finger Cooking” was launched. A father shows the viewer how to “cook” by ordering pizza.

Result:

17. Applebee’s Increases Lunch Sales with ‘Smart’ Strategy

To promote the restaurant’s quick lunchtime service, Applebee’s Neighborhood Bar & Grill launched a multi-channel campaign. Customers are guaranteed their lunch within 14 minutes or the meal is free. To fill that time, select Applebee’s restaurants have provided QR Codes at each table for customers to scan as they wait, directing them to either the Applebee’s Facebook page or YouTube content created by the chain.

Result:

18. Dunkin’ Promotions: Online Influencers

In its first move collaborating with an online influencer, Dunkin’ Donuts teamed up with TikTok star Charli D’Amelio and launched a particular drink, “The Charli”, named after the influencer. There was also a dance challenge that went along with it which not surprisingly became an equally huge hit.

Results

19. Fans Go Loco for Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Tacos

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Taco Bell wanted to celebrate with a new, bold product. With the successful introduction of the Gordita and Chalupa in the past, they looked to innovate where no one else had: the taco shell. Partnering with Frito-Lay, they created a fully seasoned chip-like taco shell and fans couldn’t be happier.

Result:

20. “Oh, Yes We Did”: Domino’s Overhauls Its Brand

With sales stagnating and stores closing due to customer dissatisfaction, Domino’s needed to turn their brand around. They re-invented their menu with new recipes and retrained every pizza maker then got the word out to customers through commercials and a rented billboard in Times Square where customer reviews were presented – good or bad. This was the beginning of a series of unique restaurant promotion ideas the brand leveraged in the next decade.

Result:

21. Redefining Mobile Marketing: Jack in the Box Takes to the Streets

With the popularity of food trucks on the rise, Jack in the Box wanted to think outside their brick-and-mortar business model. A 34’ truck dubbed “Jack’s Munchie Mobile” was created with all the kitchen equipment available at their restaurants. The mobilized restaurant has attended over 100 events in Southern California. This can be an answer for many independents asking “how to promote my restaurant”.

Result:

22. See More Sales: Papa Murphy’s Uses SMS to Reach Customers

In order to reach their customers in unique and effective ways, Papa Murphy’s partnered with Phizzle to start a text-message based restaurant promotion. Three or four times a month, an SMS blast is sent out to participating customers with a coupon for free items.

Result:

23.  Red Lobster Restaurant Promotion Fail: All-You-Can-Eat Was Too Much

This promotion arguably cost Red Lobster’s president Edna Morris her position for letting hungry customers eat too much of its all-you-can-eat crab dinners. She tried to boost profits with a $22.99 dinner promotion — but instead lost millions by bungling her calculations on how many times patrons would refill their plates with expensive crab and the fixings. High commodity costs that overlapped with the company’s promotion further hurt the company’s bottom line.

Results

24. Push for Pizza: Red Tomato Pizza Creates One-Touch Pizza Ordering

Looking for a way to win out against their large chain competitors, Red Tomato Pizza of Dubai developed the VIP Fridge Magnet. Customers simply set their pizza preferences on the company website, connect the magnet via Bluetooth to a smartphone, and with a single push of the button, pizza is on its way.

Result:

25. Hot Dog! Nathan’s Fans Eat It Up This Restaurant Promotion

Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest began as a small publicity stunt. Their goal was to get a photo of the restaurant in a local paper. Over the past 40 years, the annual contest has become an international spectacle, with the restaurant spending their entire advertising budget on the event rather than television commercials and other traditional advertising media. Events like this one can result cost-effective for promoting a restaurant especially to students and a young audience.

Result:

26. Play With Your Food: Domino’s Launches Pizza Video Game

Domino’s leads the market when it comes to mobile ordering for good reason: they are constantly redefining customer engagement  — this time with Pizza Hero, an iPad game that lets customers virtually build their own pizza and then order it. Customers can also apply for work through this game.

Result:

27. Culinary Crowdsourcing: McDonald’s Menu Hits the Masses

To celebrate their 40th anniversary, McDonald’s asked their German customers to design a celebratory burger. A web application was created where users could build a completely customized burger, post their creation to a gallery, and vote on their favorites. Thus, the Pretzelnator was born, but not without plenty of competition.

Result:

28. VIP Treatment: Domino’s Rewards Loyal Customers

The first of its kind to team up with Foursquare, Domino’s led the geo-targeting race of restaurateurs by offering a free pizza to the “Mayor” in Liverpool each week. The success of this campaign caused Domino’s to roll this restaurant promotion out to the rest of Britain.

Result:

29. Hell Pizza: Friendship’s Trial by Fire

The Ghost Pepper Challenge was just gaining speed on YouTube when Hell Pizza of New Zealand turned it into a game for their customers. Upon request, the hottest peppers known to man were placed on a single slice of a pizza pie. Friends and family would sit down together to eat, but one unlucky diner would end up with a mouth full of fire.

Result:

30. Sweetgreen Collaborates with Renowned Chefs

Another way to create a limited-time offer that captures everybody’s attention is to collaborate with chefs, celebrities, or influencers. In 2020, sweetgreen partnered with David Chang and Atlantic Sea Farms and added kelp (a seaweed) to the menu.

Result:

How to Plan a Restaurant Promotion

It’s always useful to answer a few questions before running a promotion to make sure you have all the aspects affecting the business covered, that it’s something that will resonate with your customer, and to protect yourself from any blind spots or unintended consequences:

What to consider After/While Running a Promotion at your Restaurant

When measuring the results and benefits of a marketing campaign or a promotion at a restaurant, the return-on-investment cannot always be quantified mathematically. Sometimes other factors that are hard to quantify are as important as the increase in sales. Some of the potential results from a promotion to think about are:

Occasions and Reasons to Run a Restaurant Promotion

There can be a number of themes or reasons for running a promotion at a restaurant. Some of the common ones are:

Restaurant Promotions Work Best When Built From the Bottom Up

We’ve written before about marketing and how to improve sales with promotions from Valentine’s to Independence Day (across the world) to Ramadan in the Middle East.

However, ramping up sales is better done (more sustainable in the long term and without a deterioration in margins) with a marketing and promotional strategy built from the bottom up and inside out; from store-level merchandising to modernized neighborhood marketing, to national and multi-national product and brand launches, fostering differentiation and innovation to retrofit the restaurant competitive advantage.

How to promote a restaurant?

There are a myriad ways to promote a restaurant, including price promotions, promotions for new items, bundle promotions, prizes and giveaways, events, pop up and food trucks, partnerships with chefs/celebrities/influencers, social media, publicity stunts, and more.

How to promote a restaurant on social media?

To attract attention in Instagram, X (twitter), TikTok, Facebook, etc. restaurants can run contests, engage with followers, post content and have “instagramable” menu items and drinks, use paid ads, post about LTOs and promotions, create games, and much more!

How to promote a new restaurant?

Eight weeks before the grand opening start preparing: budget, publicity, earned media (invite local journalists and influencers), press release, theme or main attraction for the opening (live music, entertainment, games), and staff training.

How to promote breakfast in a restaurant?

Breakfast sales can be increased with promotions like offering a free pastry item with regular coffee purchases, diversifying the offerings and considering those who need something quick for takeout vs. those customers who will sit down for eggs, and upgrade your menu with weekend brunch options.

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ABOUT AARON ALLEN & ASSOCIATES:

Aaron Allen & Associates is a leading global restaurant industry consultancy specializing in growth strategy, marketing, branding, and commercial due diligence for emerging restaurant chains and prestigious private equity firms. We have helped restaurant companies around the world drive revenues, increase profits, and enhance the guest experience through improved marketing, messaging, and menu engineering. Collectively, our clients post more than $300 billion, span all 6 inhabited continents and 100+ countries, with locations totaling tens of thousands.

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