Free Social Media Influence from Great Brand Building

Image: Chili’s 

​Corporate Challenge: Making the best products possible.

Ironbound Strategy: When a brand focuses on creating value for customers, many times employees, and society also benefit.

Ironbound Action:  Texas based Chili’s restaurants hyper focus on menu items that create value for customers.  By focusing on making the best possible mozzarella sticks for their new “mix and match apps”, they stumbled upon instant success.  Customers began making videos of the mozzarella stick cheese pulls; the wave of influence was hotly noticed.  Sales at Chili’s increased 70%, with mozzarella sticks making up 11% of total revenue.  To date, there are 144 million posts on TikTok dedicated to Chili’s new appetizer.  When a brand makes the best possible product, customers will freely advertise and promote the product, providing more value to the company and its employees.

​* Chili’s parent company Brinker (NYSE: EAT) has seen consistent year over year revenue growth from $3.3B in 2021, to $3.8B in 2022, to $4.1B in 2023, to $4.4B in 2024.
 
** Brinker International’s earnings-per-share has increased from $2.89 in 2021 to $3.49 in 2024, with a trailing-twelve-month EPS of $4.20 from recent rapid sales growth.