Recently we had the pleasure of hearing how brand partners from the San Francisco Bay Area wing chains Wingstop are using enterprise social to improve collaboration between all their partners and restaurant owners. Check out the interview with Tony Lam, President of San Francisco Bay Area Wingstop Marketing Association and Terry Blanchard, the President of the South Bay Wings, Inc.
What sort of challenges did your organization face that made you turn to enterprise social networking?
“With [35] restaurants in the bay area and more than 15 or more brand partners… communication is very important,” said Terry Blanchard, President of the South Bay Wings, Inc. “We had challenges in terms of the cooperative marketing association we started. We needed some sort of solution or a tool to help facilitate and improve collaboration over all.”
How has tibbr helped Wingstop solve these problems?
“We’ve proven that there’s a need for collaboration,” Terry said. “We have a lot of information among all the different owners and partners that it would facilitate sharing of information. Whether real time or not, just the ability to cost effectively share information and not have to actually meet in person in order for that to occur, so that ability to have that virtual sharing is a pretty powerful tool.”
“The other important thing was to have basically a repository for documents and information such that it would solve the one problem that as a new brand partner coming into this particular region, you would be able to go back and see a history of what occurred before they actually got here.”
Why we chose tibbr over other platforms?
“We chose tibbr because the layout was really simple,” said Tony Lam, President of San Francisco Bay Area Wingstop Marketing Association. “I’m now the admin of that tool and I was able to pick up that tool within a couple of hours, from being able to create survey polls, creating calendar events, to creating new user accounts and to be able to start getting people more engaged using that tool.”
“I like how tibbr is a sort of subject-based tool and we have people talk about various subjects and give their insights about it,” Tony said.
Can you give us an example about how tibbr helped solve a problem?
“One of the problems we had was determining if it was possible to get one consistent pricing,” Tony said. “So I posted this survey out on tibbr and 95% of the respondents said they would agree to one consistent pricing. It’s been a very big challenge because every store has had the ability to determine what prices they want to put on their menu prices. Now regardless of what restaurant you go to, the prices are going to be the same throughout the whole bay area.”
About Wingstop
Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Richardson, Texas, Wingstop has more than 500 restaurants open across the United States and Mexico. With a sole focus on chicken wings, the Wingstop menu features 10 wing flavors including Original Hot, Cajun, Atomic, Mild, Teriyaki, Lemon Pepper, Hawaiian, Garlic Parmesan, Hickory Smoked BBQ and Louisiana Rub. Wings are made fresh, cooked-to-order and customers can also choose from home including Wingstop’s award winning fresh-cut seasoned fries. Wingstop has experienced eight consecutive years of positive sales increase, was named a Top 10 Best Franchise Deal by QSR magazine, and has been voted ‘best wings’ in markets across the country. Troy Aikman, three-time Super Bowl champion and Hall of Fame quarterback, has served as the chain’s national spokesman since 2003 and recently joined the Wingstop Board of Directors. Wingstop was acquired in 2010 by affiliates of Roark Capital Group, an Atlanta-based private equity firm that specializes in business and consumer service companies with attractive growth prospects and revenues ranging from $20 million to $1.0 billion.
