May 16, 2008
You’re hungry but the day is getting away from you, so you decide to grab a quick-serve something. If you don’t want to leave, your choices include: Au Bon Pain, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, Ben & Jerry’s, Burger King, Café Metro, Cosi, Cucina & Co., Dean & Deluca, Dunkin’ Donuts, Hale & Hearty, Liberty Deli, Manchu Wok, McDonald’s, Mendy’s Kosher Deli, Original SoupMan, Pret A Manger, Sbarro, Starbucks, Subway, Tossed, Tuscan Square, Two Boots, Wendy’s, Yips Pow Wok, and Yummy Sushi.
All of these restaurants are situated in what New Yorkers casually refer to as The Catacombs, a network of underground corridors that link 14 Rockefeller Center buildings to one another and the New York City subway system. For the potential customer it is an embarrassment of caloric riches. For proprietors one reasonably assumes that the question is more along the lines of “How do I stand out?”
This last question kept playing through my brain on a recent visit to Manhattan, not just in the Rockefeller Center Underground Concourse (The Catacombs’ official name), but everywhere I wandered above and below ground. In a city so dense with quality dining options of every conceivable fast and slow variety, how does one break through the clutter? What sort of marketing life raft is available in such a teeming sea?
Marc Meisel, co-founder of Tossed, an upscale made-to-order salad chain, almost smiles at the question. In answer, he offers that an appealing culinary concept coupled with Manhattan foot traffic is just about all one needs to capture trial. “Just walking by,” Meisel explains, is a phenomenon that captures “countless impressions.”
Although Meisel did work with a publicist at the beginning, he claims that the buzz about his concept became great because of another sort of density, provided by the New York publishing community. A complimentary blurb in Time Out magazine caught the attention of a Daily News reviewer, and press kept generating press. The New York Times chipped in a complimentary review when, to prove Meisel’s original point, one of its food reporters just happened to walk by the store.
While the expansion of Tossed as a national concept has been a little slow on the uptake, recent financing has led to the establishment of a new Florida headquarters and an ambitious expansion plan with a goal of 200 units by 2010. Currently there are two corporate stores in New York, and one each in New Jersey and Florida. Franchises have opened in Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, Texas, and Massachusetts. In the non-New York locations, Meisel offers, there is much more emphasis on a “formal marketing obligation,” with contributions to an ad fund, formal opening campaigns, POP materials, newspaper ads, and sample radio spots.
New York though, contends Meisel, will always remain a law unto itself. For example, there is an enormous reliance in New York on delivery. Sixty percent of Tossed’s Rockefeller Center business is conducted online (Tossed’s real genius marketing idea might be its online salad bar ordering capabilities). Close to two-thirds of online orders are for delivery. The right concept and customer convenience might work anywhere, Meisel admits, but nowhere else does simply “handing out menus” get you into the game like it does in New York.
Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold is another industry pro who acknowledges traditional advertising is not going to garner the rewards that density plus buzz is going to bring in the Big Apple. Despite Chipotle’s trepidations about bringing its “fast food tacos and burritos” concept to “arguably the best food city in the world,” the chain launched its New York presence with a City Meals on Wheels benefit that had every seat in its first restaurant filled within the first 30 minutes of operation.
As with Tossed, Chipotle benefited from rapid and very favorable reviews in The New York Times and The New York Post. Currently at 15 New York City units and climbing, Chipotle generally opens a new unit with a free burrito day that, according to Arnold, costs just about the same as an ad would in The New York Times and generates “6,000 ambassadors” for the restaurant. Arnold’s voice takes on a mixture of wonder and delight as he describes police having to close a street on St. Marks Place in Greenwich Village during one opening, and people waiting in line for three hours in 100-degree heat to get a free burrito at a Rockefeller Center vicinity store.
“Word of mouth works really well in New York,” Arnold concludes. “We’re doing real well here and definitely have plans to open more stores. We could support significantly more based on density ratios we run elsewhere.”
Live and learn.
