Charleys Cheesesteaks
The Project
July 13 is National French Fry Day, and Inspire PR Group worked with Charleys Cheesesteaks to develop a promotion for the holiday, highlighting their menu items. This resulted in a large media push for the brand, placing Charleys within the same articles as its competitors at other top fast
food and fast casual restaurants.
Inspire helped create Charleys’ deal for the holiday – free French fries with any online cheesesteak order, either on Charleys’ website or Rewards app, based on research of previous holiday coverage.
Inspire utilized unique pitching strategies, including Substack publications and Google Forms, to secure media placements in national and trade publications, furthering Charleys’ brand awareness. When planning media outreach for this campaign, Inspire focused on a few different scopes of coverage: national consumer media, food and beverage trade publications and local media in Charleys’ target markets. This included listicles in high-profile publications, features in restaurant trade media and syndicated articles across target sales markets. Inspire used both personalized and widespread pitching to accomplish the campaign goals, and both methods resulted in an unprecedented press push. The agency began outreach two weeks ahead of the holiday, which captured the right timeframe for story pitches and drafts within the media.
The Results
As National French Fry Day approached, Charleys received 56 media mentions related to their promotion, with over 200 million unique monthly visitors between sites. This included mentions in: Today.com ; People Magazine ; Axios ; Thrillist ; Yahoo News ; Uproxx ; QSR Magazine ; Restaurant Business.
As Charleys worked to refresh its brand awareness as the brand expanded, the national consumer mentions helped to educate readers that Charleys offered fries – a menu items some may not have considered for the brand. Charleys was mentioned in the same headline as top competitors like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, equating to a huge win for the company.
The National French Fry Day coverage didn’t just increase brand awareness – it increased sales as well. Charleys shared sales numbers with Inspire, which indicated that 343 loyalty members and 206 non-loyalty website visitors redeemed the coupon offer, and orders from loyalty members generated $27,154 in sales. Overall, fry sales increased from July 9-13, 2022, which included National French Fry Day, compared to the prior week. Overall, National French Fry Day generated sales totaling $1,306,115.36.