Monthly reports indicate that all is well at Irvine-based restaurant operator Galardi Group Inc.—sales are up at its Wienerschnitzel, The Original Hamburger Stand and Tastee Freez franchises throughout the nation.
For now.
A closer look at the statistics point out that the median age of the Irvine-based company’s customer base also is on the rise.
The upward trend has prompted J.R. Galardi, 25, son of late founder John Galardi, to start what he calls the Visionary Department. It’s singular goal: “to capture tomorrow’s consumer,” which translates to the much-talked-about, social-media-driven Millennial generation.
“10 Miles Ahead”
“Our job is to look 10 miles ahead,” he said. “We don’t want to change marketing direction by any means, but expand it. We want to maintain our roots. This thing that my father spent his life building is amazing. He laid this insanely deep foundation for a well-respected company that has a very loyal customer base. I’m not trying to change that by any means. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel—I’m just trying to put rims on it.”
Galardi Group had about $230 million in sales last year, according to a Business Journal estimate, with Wienerschnitzel’s 350 stores accounting for most of the revenue.
“Sales have been going up, so everything that we’ve been doing is right. And in a franchise company, at the end of the day, it’s all about the sales, the [return on investment], and what we are doing to bring more people in through the doors of the restaurants,” Galardi said. “The point of the Visionary Department is not necessarily to bring people in tomorrow, but to bring people in consistently 10 years down the line, to build this loyalty to a brand at a young age.”
It has been done before, with a prime example right here in Orange County, he said.
“Vans was an old, stale company that I didn’t even know was around anymore, and all of a sudden everyone is wearing their shoes,” Galardi said. “I don’t know how they did it, but they were everywhere overnight.”
The Galardi Group’s Visionary Department will function as an extension of an existing marketing effort spearheaded by Vice President of Marketing Tom Amberger and the company’s advertising agency of record, Santa Ana-based DGWB Advertising & Communications.
A main focus will be increasing the company’s social media presence and raising the number of followers and fan interactions on its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages.
Two social media campaigns created by the in-house team will be launched by the end of the year.
Galardi said he anticipates no changes in current budgets to pay for the campaigns but “shifts in what we currently do to accommodate what we’d like to do with the Visionary Department and social media and digital marketing.”
“Less than 20 years ago, it was all print, TV, radio,” he said. “Now the way things are changing, a lot of companies are allocating (the) majority of their marketing budget—or at least a good portion of it—to social media and Web-based marketing. We’ve begun doing things like that.”
US Open of Surfing
The visionary team will launch its first “activation” during the 2014 Vans US Open of Surfing, scheduled for July 28 to 29 in Huntington Beach. A van covered with an image of Wienerschnitzel’s mascot will be at the event, with a street team handing out coupons for hot dogs and ice cream to the company’s target audience.
Galardi said his peers often tell him they have heard about Wienerschnitzel, but “no one’s ever been there.”
“So we want to create a reason to” go to the restaurants with the steep-pitched roofs and mustard-and-ketchup color schemes, he said.
“Maybe someone will be driving down Beach Boulevard who normally passes that A-frame every single day, and now they saw us at US Open or something like that, and all of a sudden it’s, ‘Oh, let’s pull over and try it,’ ” he said. “The food is good; I’ll vouch for the food all day, so all we got to do is get them that first chili dog, and all of a sudden it’s back on their radar as a place where they can go and indulge or eat and take their friends.”
Perception
The effort, aside from introducing a new customer base to the chain’s products, is also a bid to change the perception of hot dogs as unhealthy.
“If you get a chili dog, it has 270 calories,” Galardi said. “You compare that to any Subway sandwich, and we win. There is a lot of food out there that has the perception of health, which is big in the Millennial market, but hot dogs are perceived kind of at the bottom of the market, fun, indulgent food. I’m not saying they are kale salad, but they are not as bad as the perception of them, that mystery meat, the horse meat or whatever.”
