If you deal with anyone in marketing, have a tranquilizer gun ready. One day they’re merrily popping bon mots into Facebook or Twitter to keep their brands sounding edgy to the LOLing masses. Then, in less time than it takes to eat a Starburst, they’re confronted with an alien marketing universe, an unchartered but obviously important-to-master Twitter knockoff called Threads. It’s still so novel that even their teenaged children can’t help.
Rest easy, you brave pilots of demand creation. A refuge awaits you in the form of casual dining, where Elvis is not only alive but quite possibly a spokesman for some nachos-slinging brand. Threads may prove a big part of restaurant marketing in the future, but the full-service chain sector is betting on its breakthrough tactics of yesteryear.
If you’re a member of Olive Garden’s loyalty program, you’ll know the Darden Restaurants chain has resurrected its buy one/take one home promo, a proven check and traffic booster from its past. If you purchase an entrée, you can add a second chilled meal to take home for an extra $6.
The deal differs from what the chain’s 2019 version in several ways. First, it’s a dollar higher in price. The choice is also far more limited. Customers can pick one of three chilled entrees: ziti, fettucini Alfredo or spaghetti with meat sauce.
Plus, the offer is purely on a one-to-one basis. For each entrée you buy at full price, you have the option of purchasing a second for $6. Under the old deal, you could purchase up to five chilled take-home meals for $5 each for each full-priced selection you bought.
But the biggest change is that the deal extends to takeout orders. Previously, you had to eat the meal on-premise if you wanted to take a second with you.
The chain is not the only big brand to embrace the marketing staple from casual dining’s past. Maggiano’s is also now offering a second take-home pasta dish for $6 to customers who buy a full-priced entrée. The selection is a little broader: six selections, ranging from lasagna to spaghetti and meatballs.
Cracker Barrel doesn’t neatly fit the definition of a casual-dining concept, though it refers to itself as such. But it’s part of the group embracing the second-meal promo. Buy a regular entrée and you take home a chilled one for another $5. The options are limited to meatloaf with either mashed potatoes or mac ‘n cheese, or fried chicken with mac ‘n cheese.
The offer fits the family-dining chain’s efforts to stress value. It’s also touting 20 entrees priced under $12.
If the time travel ended there for full-service chains, you might shrug off the fit of nostalgia as a longing for easier days. Or maybe the result of an acid flashback.
But the retro-marketing doesn’t end there. The other fallback for casual chains was the 3-for-$10 promo, the bait that helped the big brands survive the downturn that followed the Great Recession. Customers could order an app and entrée and share a dessert for $10 a person.
In at least the Greater New York area, Chili’s has resurrected a modern-day version of the come-on. For $10.99 each, patrons can get chips and salsa, a “bottomless” soft drink and a burger and fries.
Ruby Tuesday all but throws a spotlight every Thursday on hits from its past. The brand focuses each week on an “inflation-busting” [read: bargain-priced] offer, be it a Philly cheesesteak or a chicken sandwich.
But the brand gives the offer a definite modern-day twist: To find out what the offer might be on any given week, you have to join its loyalty program.
Take that, Threads.