Flavor of The City Case Study

The Opportunity

In the summer of 2008, Flavor of The City was just a concept in minds of small group of sales and marketing Foodies in Seattle, Washington. Piloting the program concept in their backyard seemed only natural with Seattle’s vast culinary diversity and quality local restaurants. Through an integration of online and offline media platforms Flavor of The City is building a grassroots branding program with the launch of The Flavor Of Seattle.

The Challenge

When close to home consumers will often dine at a favored local establishment where they are familiar with the people and food quality. When those same consumers are across town or in an area where they are not familiar with the local restaurants they will often choose the security of one of the big chains. The perception being that there is a reasonable level of expectation of quality. The Flavor of The City program is designed to help these high quality local establishments compete with the corporate chains.

The Objective

Create a new brand around the local dining experience.

Design and produce high quality sales collateral for a consistent offline brand experience.

The Execution

Azimuth Branding in partnership with KilmerHansen Graphic Design positioned The Flavor of Seattle as “The Upscale Local Dining Experience.” A high quality, serialized membership card was developed to promote up to twenty participating restaurants. To participate a restaurant must be locally owned, be of a certain food quality, agree to honor a predefined incentive to first time visitors that present a membership card, and agree to offer the membership cards to their existing clientele.

If an establishment meets these requirements then their logo and reservation line are placed on the back of the membership card. The establishment’s risk is mitigated by the fact that there are no costs to join the program, and it is indeed an additional revenue source for them as membership cards are sold exclusively through participating establishments. Only when a patron returns or is referred by the program do they have to honor the incentive.

A Flavor of The City representative trains the wait staff on how to sell, present and redeem the membership cards. They are provided with high quality, laminated stock inserts for their check presenters to promote the program, an initial inventory of 20 membership cards, and a high quality gift card presenter which encourages the recipient to register the card online for additional promotions.