An uninspired audience

The smoothie business is highly volatile. Seasonality and weather, either too hot or too cold, is devastating on revenue. All of which are not excuses franchisees want to hear when the thermometer dips and people stop coming into their stores. Despite the realities, corporate needed to reach revenue goals as promised to franchisee owners.

Unexpected insights leading to original ideas

The unexpected insights from core smoothie fanatics was that they only thought of Tropical Smoothie as a smoothie shop, not a cafe that offered food for lunch and dinners. While Tropical Smoothie was not going to convince people to buy a smoothie on cold winter days, they could inspire people to buy food – and through food, add a seasonally appropriate smoothie onto the deal. Tropical Smoothie Cafe was named for a reason – and we had to put the word “Cafe” back into the mindset of the audience.

The audience is inspired and is buying

The themed “Naughty or Nice” campaign launched and combined seasonally appropriate foods and smoothies as one big delight – either healthful or indulgent depending on the emotional moods of the audience. This strategy proved successful all year long despite mother nature’s will. The brand’s core audience was inspired and found new meaning and reasons to buy in to off-season visits, while attracting a newer audience seeking newer, healthful, mealtime options that were far away from the fast-food players. Revenue met projections and launched Tropical Smoothie Cafe as one of the fastest growing franchisee model restaurant brand’s in the nation.