The newest drive-thru up north is actually for tubers, not for
drivers. To promote the return of the Cheetos Crunchwrap Slider,
Taco Bell Canada will take orders at the top of a tubing hill at
Horseshoe Resort, near Barrie, Ontario, on March 2. People will
slide down and retrieve their orders from a take-out window at the
bottom. The one-day tubing experience is set to be open for a few
hours. Taco Bell Canada's more traditional locations get the
Cheetos Crunchwrap Slider back on Feb. 25.
Speaking of fast food...
Who knew one person's take on french fries could create such
angst? The Los Angeles Times ran a ranking compiled by food
columnist Lucas Kwan Peterson. ICYMI, he says Five Guys fries are
the best and put California's In-N-Out in last place. The lovers
and haters, on both sides, quickly weighed in. The paper's own
social media intern wasn't pleased:
Even Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted his
disagreement:
Wingstop takes flight
"Where Flavor Gets its Wings" is the tagline for Wingstop in its
first campaign from Leo Burnett,
which it hired in late 2018 for national marketing. The effort
is the wing chain's largest national push to date, and includes ads
featuring wings that fly, sort of.
Click-and-collect is winning
Click-and-collect—which refers to consumers buying online
but picking up in store—has become a potent weapon for
retailers against Amazon, according to a new survey of 2,000
consumers by Doddle, which makes technology to enable online
ordering for offline pickup. Doddle finds 70 percent of shoppers
have made multiple click-and-collect purchases, and 85 percent of
them have made an additional in-store purchase when they do. Even
discounting a self-interested tech vendor's survey, consider the
lackluster-for-Amazon 18-percent growth in North American goods and
services sales the (mostly) online retailer reported last quarter.
Click-and-collect leader Walmart, meantime, reported a strong
43-percent growth in e-commerce, along with a surprising
4.2-percent increase in overall U.S. same-store sales.
No crying in private-label hardball
There was a time when suppliers were reluctant to battle big
retailers' private labels in court, or similar forums, because
retailers could always retaliate. But Nestle has taken on the maker
of Parent's Choice Probiotic Colic Drops—a Walmart private
label—and won before the National Advertising Division of the
Council of Better Business Bureaus. Walmart wasn't a defendant, but
Parent's Choice supplier BioAmicus Laboratories was. In a
statement, BioAmicus agreed to follow NAD recommendations by
dropping several claims, including the bold one that its drops are
"clinically shown to reduce crying time by 50%."
Would you buy this?
Just when we recovered from
IHOP's "Pancizza" comes Papa John's Hot Honey Chicken and
Waffles pizza, which debuts later this year. It comes from the
chain's "pick our next pizza" contest.
Number of the Week
$86 million: Total U.S. sales of cannabis-based drinks last
year, according to a new report frm Zenith Global and Beverage
Digest. The market is forecast to grow to more than $1.4 billion in
2023.
Tweet of the Week
Comings and goings
Mark Salebra, a longtime operator of McDonald's restaurants, was
elected chairman of the chain's franchisee group. He's also a
founder of the National Owners Association, a group of McDonald's
operators that formed last year to help give franchisees a stronger
voice in their relationship with the Golden Arches.
The
Wonderful Agency, the in-house agency for The Wonderful
Company, says Tom Sann will join its creative team as executive
producer on Feb. 25. He'll report to Chief Creative Officer Darren
Moran, working on the company's consumer and philanthropic brands,
plus internal video content. Sann was most recently an executive
producer at BBDO New York, producing work for brands such as
AT&T, Visa, Gillette, ExxonMobil, J&J and Humana, the
company says.
Real estate company Halstead has tapped Matthew Leone as chief
brand and marketing officer, a newly created position. Leone
formerly worked as chief marketing officer of Terra Holdings.
Personal Capital, a digital finance company, has a new chief
marketing officer in Porter Gale. Gale most recently served as
marketing general manager and interim CMO at tech company
Globality.
Contributing: E.J. Schultz, Jessica Wohl, Adrianne
Pasquarelli, Jack Neff, Orla McCaffrey
