Posted by Tim on May 12, 2012
If you walk into The Pickle Barrel, a sandwich shop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the first thing you notice is all of the employees wearing T-shirts with QR co
des printed on the back. When they turn around, the front of the T-shirt reads: “Ask Me About Online Ordering.”
“We’ve been using NetWaiter for online ordering since January and we love it,” said owner Jen O’Brien, who opened the sandwich shop seven years ago in this town of 153,000 people. “We have a lot of fun with it, and it’s convenient for both our customers and us.”
With the arrival of online ordering, O’Brien decided to step up some marketing to build its awareness. She started placing a sign at a random location in the city, and then dropped daily hints on the restaurant’s Facebook site regarding its location. Each person that found the sign and posted a picture of it on The Pickle Barrel Facebook page got entered into a drawing at the end of the week for a $25 gift certificate.
“In just a few days we got fifty new friends on our Facebook site and a ton of orders,” said O’Brien.
O’Brien has been using social media to promote the restaurant for a few years. She readily admits that there is a good deal of experimentation involved. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The nice thing about the NetWaiter Management Console is that I can see right away if a promotion resulted in more online sales. I know what’s working.”
