This was COQODAQ’s first year partnering at the US Open as a food vendor on the club level suite, and we were looking to raise awareness around our Better Fried Chicken™ offering and branding. As part of our mission to constantly pursue the highest quality product to our consumers, our chicken is made with gluten-free batter, pasture-raised birds, and no seed oils. As a new food vendor, with our restaurant only having been open for 6 months at the time, we wanted to increase awareness of our brand to the consumer marketplace as well as amplify our Better Fried Chicken™ “better chicken, better batter, better oil” storytelling.
By partnering with the US Open, COQODAQ secured a presence on the club level of Arthur Ashe Stadium, allowing us to reach a diverse and upscale audience. This collaboration provided us a platform to increase our reach and target a new demographic by showcasing our unique offerings to tennis fans and the sports community.
To achieve our goal of increasing awareness of our restaurant and Better Fried Chicken™ branding, our strategy was to create an easy-to-eat, to-go experience for our most popular, high-end menu items that you wouldn’t normally expect to eat on the go. In order to get the earned reach from press and influencers that we were targeting, we knew that a couple key things would be critical: our packaging had to stand out and be super user-friendly and our custom US Open branding had to be super cohesive across our physical products and digital content.
We emphasized COQODAQ’s standout dish, the “Golden Nugget,” a gluten-free, pasture-raised fried chicken nugget topped with caviar along with four house-made sauces and pickled daikon. This luxurious item, packaged in orange-branded boxes custom-made for the US Open, was designed to attract attention and create buzz among attendees by increasing word of mouth marketing and impressions on social..
Utilizing social media platforms like Instagram, we generated excitement through exciting and unconventional content for the F&B space: we did food photoshoots on tennis courts, created reels of tennis balls flowing in our restaurants, posted custom branded US Open x COQODAQ animations, as well as reposted organic content of influencers and celebrities with our orange boxes. We also showcased our custom branding, made specifically for the US Open, including our tennis inspired uniforms (hat + polo), custom caviar spoons, and our frozen yogurt machine (which was named after Reilly Opelka, a tennis player and investor).
In addition, we featured in-restaurant activations with branded check presenters for every guest who dined as well as partnering with Vita Coco to offer a hydration mocktail given to people complimentary for people waiting at the 4pm COQODAQ line and a limited-time cocktail mocktail duo also made with Vita Coco, where you can choose to add Grey Goose vodka to it to “play” or drink as a mocktail to “hydrate”.
Our unique concept of packaging our signature, high-end caviar chicken nuggets to go at a major sporting event garnered significant social media and press media attention.
Our PR outreach and communications, garnered over 2.5 billion press impressions and 77 articles in just two weeks. This extensive media coverage included features in prominent publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, Good Morning America, US Weekly, and many more. Articles varied from profile features on Simon Kim and Chef SK, to ‘best food spots at the US Open,’ ‘most anticipated US Open openings’ and more.
On socials, our campaign generated over 1,000,000 account views with a 200% increase in accounts reached and 150% increase in engagements. We saw an influx in website, profile, and restaurant visits, spiking curiosity in our newly opened Flatiron restaurant. With a signature orange box, we also garnered a lot of organic social media traffic, with influencers and celebrities like Lindsey Lohan, Kendall Jenner, Martha Stewart and Emily Ratajkowski posting our box on social media. Our recap of celebrities posting with our box garnered 89,196 impressions.