Cara Anne AndersonCaitlyn Mackenzie Haleigh StaalnerLiam AinslieRyan Thibodeau

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SOCIAL PLAN FINAL: WAFFLE HOUSE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview........................................................................................ 3

Target Audiences........................................................................ 6

SWOT Analysis............................................................................. 7

Business Objectives................................................................... 8

Target Audience and Social Use............................................. 9

Social Media................................................................................ 13

Social Media: Audit .................................................................. 14

Social Media: Big Idea.............................................................. 18

Social Media: Particulars......................................................... 19

Social Media: Example Content............................................. 20

Social Media: Content Calendar............................................ 23

Business Objective: Metrics Table........................................ 24

Social Media: Budget Table.................................................... 25

Executive Summary.................................................................. 26

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OVERVIEW

Waffle House is an American restaurant chain with over 2,100 locations and currently in 25 states in the US, most of which are located in the South. Headquarters are located in Gwinnett County, Georgia near Norcross. Waffle House was founded by Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner with their f irst location opened on Labor Day weekend in 1955 in Avondale Estates, Georgia.

Waffle House co-founders

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OVERVIEW

Waffle House prides themselves with not being in the “food business, we are in the people business.” Which you can feel with their standard operating procedures and restaurant decor and layout which remain consistent at each location.

“Waffle House doors have

nolocks!”

Waffle House loves their customers and

customers love their local Waffle House locations, and the brand as a whole. The restaurant concept which combines the speed of fast food with table service and around-the-clock

availability is a cultural icon in the US with it’s familiar “yellow sign”, especially in the South, due to the proximity to the interstate. There’s even an urban myth that “Waffle House doors have no locks”!

MISSION STATEMENT: “deliver a unique experience to our customers through delivering great food, friendly, attentive service, excellent price and a welcoming presence.”

Buildings all have the same design and memorable yellow sign to welcome new and returning customers

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Though it’s the most well-known breakfast location in the South, Denny’s actually holds the #1 spot in family-style restaurant chains, with Waffle House as #2. This is mostly due to Denny’s being offered in more states. Other competitors are iHop (#1 nationally), Huddle House and Cracker Barrel but these are mainly competitors for breakfast, and not 24-hour dining like Denny’s and Waffle House.

Waffle House is unique in that it doesn’t spend much on marketing initiatives to lure customers to their locations. They rely more on word-of-mouth and location based marketing such as interstate food option signage and the occasional billboard. Most advertising is in the location where they advertise specials, new menu items, or where they highlight everyday favorites such as “Alice’s Iced Tea” or “Bert’s Chili” created by previous Waffle House employees.

KEY COMPETITORS

MARKETING ACTIVITIES

OVERVIEW

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TARGET AUDIENCESYounger Audience

Older Audience

John is a college student studying Accounting at the University of Georgia. He grew up in Alpharetta, GA and always went to Waffle House after Friday night football games with his friends in High School. John is a huge fan of Waffle House because he can get a lot of food for pretty cheap which is great because he is trying not to have to get a job while in college. John likes to post his Waffle House meals on Snapchat and Instagram and never gets on Facebook anymore cause his Mom stalks his profile too much. He recently signed up for the Waffle House “Regulars Club” and is ready to redeem his free waffle coupon and cant wait to post it on social!

Charles is a veteran and one of his many joys of his recent retirement is heading to Waffle House for Sunday breakfast with his wife after church. Charles doesn’t get on social media much but when he does it’s because his wife tagged him in something and a notification popped up on his smartphone. Charles saw marketing signage in Waffle House last week asking patrons to follow them on social media. Charles loves his weekly Waffle House tradition so much that he snapped a ‘selfie’ with his wife and posted it on Facebook. He got 5 ‘likes’, his wife was thrilled.

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SWOTANALYSIS

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BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Waffle House’s business objectives can be summed up by again stating their mission statement, which they stay true to. Waffle

House aims to “deliver a unique experience to our customers through delivering great food, friendly, attentive service,

excellent price and a welcoming presence.”

Business Objectives for 2019:1. Open 10 new stores in the southeast, 5 in College Station, Texas and 5 in Oxford, Mississippi by the end of 2019 a. Only two SEC college towns without a WH2. Increase consumer engagement across all channels by 10% by the end of 2019.3. Increase sales amongst 22-34 year olds by 15% in the southeast by the end 20194 .Expand consumer reach across all platforms by 10% by the end of 2019,5. Increase customer service related engagement on social by 15% by the end of 2019. a. Namely on Twitter and Facebook

Donnie Wahlberg with smiling Waffle House staff

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TARGET AUDIENCE & SOCIAL USEBy understanding all the different type of target audiences that Waffle House has, the company can engage customers more by tailoring campaigns towards their target audience based on factors such as demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral segmentation.

Geographic SegmentationWaffle House was founded in Georgia and is a staple of the South.

The menu provides southern breakfast favorites paired with late night cravings. The map below shows the distribution of where

you are most likely to f ind a Waffle House in the US, most locations spanning outward from the original Georgia locations.

The following is numerical understanding of the where the majority of Waffle Houses are in the country, as of early 2018.

Atlanta, GA (132)Cartersville, GA (45)Greenville, SC (34)Athens, GA (29)Fort Worth, TX (25)

Nashville, TN (24)Griff in, GA (23)Commerce, GA/SC (20)Mobile, AL/Ms (20)Louisville ,KY/IN (18)

Dallas, TX (18)Macon, GA (18)Bay Minette, AL/FL (18)Charlotte, NC/SC (17)Aiken, SC/GA (17)

Map of Waffle House locations in tthe US in 2012

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TARGET AUDIENCE & SOCIAL USE

Demographic SegmentationDivides the market on the basis of demographic variables like age, gender, marital status, family size, income, religion, race, occupation, nationality, etc.

Age:

Gender:

Family size:

Marital staus:

Waffle House targets a range of ages from children, teens, college students, families all the way to older clientele.

Population Median Age, based on data from early 2018:• 25-34 yrs: 11.64%• 35-44 yrs: 11.59%• 45-54 yrs: 15.64%• 55-64 yrs: 12.31%

Gender is not distinguishing factor in Waffle House demographics due to the mass appeal and homely comforts of Waffle House.

Marital status also doesn’t play a role in Waffle House demographics but the primary audience is mostly single or unmarried patrons.

This is another factor that does not play a role in the demographics of the target audience.

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TARGET AUDIENCE & SOCIAL USE

Psychographic SegmentationThis segmentation divides the audience on the basis of their

personality, lifestyle and attitude.

Lifesyle:

People with hectic schedules who need a food option that is fast, easy, but still dine-in.

Population served based on job type:• White collar: 62.49%• Blue collar: 37.51%• Sales & off ice professionals: 26.40%• Production and transportation: 22.52%

Income:

Options on the menu are low cost and target people who want a cheaper option for dining or might have limited funds to go out.

Social Media Usage:We will dive into social media usage later on but Waffle House patrons frequently interact with Waffle House and use the most Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Further recommendations will be made for other social channels to adopt to be able to engage more with the target audience.

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TARGET AUDIENCE & SOCIAL USE

Purchasing Behavior:

Waffle House purchasing behavior is that most couples can dine for less than $20 pre tip, and most families of four can dine for less than $40 pre tip.

Behavioral SegmentationThe market is also segmented based on audience’s behaviour, usage, preference, choices and decision making. The segments are usually divided based on their knowledge of the product and usage of the product. It is believed that the knowledge of the product and its use affects the buying decision of an individual

Occasion/Timing:

Waffle House busy times include early mornings during the week-end, as well as late nights during the weekends. Lunch time would be slower and regulars would be frequent customers during the week.

Benefits Sought:

Although there are many Waffle Houses around the country, they all relatively act the same way and house the same food. The benefit sought is the consistency of the experience no matter where you go.

Loyalty:

Brand loyalty is big when it comes to Waffle House patrons, they can also join the “Regulars Club” loyalty program through Waffle House corporate which offers coupons and specials to customers who sign-up and encourage repeat visits.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

@WaffleHouse743.254 likes692,144 followers

@WaffleHouse86.7K followers43.6K tweets

@WaffleHouseOfficial53.1K followers1,127 posts

Youtube -Waffle House466 followers149,452 views

Vimeo -Waffle House58 followers19,952 views

To garner valuable business intelligence regarding the effectiveness of the Waffle House social media presence, we closely analyzed the major social media platforms on which WH is currently active: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and Youtube. To provide further granularity to the results, we analyzed not only how Waffle House is currently using these channels, but also how they are primarily being used by customers, and how our primary competition, the International House of Pancakes (iHop) is currently using these same channels. We applied a six level rubric to qualify our research results: Who, Where, What, When, Why, and Opportunity. The f inal category, Opportunity, should provide some indication of how a particular channel might be used going forward. We further isolated the level of opportunity presented by a particular channel: slight opportunity, opportunity, and strong opportunity. The results of this social media audit are summarized in the table next.

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SOCIAL MEDIA:AUDIT

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SOCIAL MEDIA:AUDIT

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SOCIAL MEDIA:AUDIT

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SOCIAL MEDIA:AUDIT

Our social media audit of Waffle House as a brand presented valuable insight into the popularity of the companies presence on key platforms, and how those platforms are being used. Waffle House is currently most active on common social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The brand posts within the typical guidelines of each respective platform use, Facebook weekly, Twitter daily. The content is generally product driven, though customer appreciation is another main theme within the feed.

Waffle House has an impressive and dedicated brand following, with each account having thousands of followers who frequently interact with the brand on social media. According to the social media audit , the feeds receive comments or questions regarding the brand from consumers everyday. On average consumers comment at least 50 times a week on the brand Facebook page, 25 times a day on the Twitter feed, and 25 comments on Instagram posts. This is a high level of interaction with a brand that is limited to one region.

Our audit further revealed that customers are primarily using the social media channels to share restaurant experiences, i.e. pictures of food, “groupies” and “self ies” while at Waffle House locations, and general comments regarding their experience, most of which are positive, though occasionally customer complaints are logged via social media. Customers are most active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Though the comments left on YouTube and Twitter are generally positive, there are so few as to deem commenting by customers on those channels statistically insignif icant.

Analysis of our main competitor’s social media presence revealed some areas that Waffle House might need to target for improvement by comparison. Most signif icantly, iHop seems to have considerably more followers on Instagram, and customer content shared to that channel by our competitor is generally very positive and represents the brand in a engaging manner. Waffle House should follow suit in this regard, and strive to create a stronger presence on Instagram. Conversely though, customer feedback is noticeably less positive for iHop on both Facebook and Twitter, though that interpretation may be to some measurable extent skewed by iHop’s disastrous temporary name change campaign. Much like Waffle House, iHop makes very little use of their YouTube channel, and they have no presence at all on Vimeo.

Waffle House generally has a fun and friendly tone within social media, staying true to their brand mission of being “friendly folk.” This is obviously well-received among followers and creates a natural transition to social media feeds that encourages reciprocation from loyal Waffle House fans. It plays into the safe space reputation that Waffle House has created for customers who are in need of comfort no matter the time, weather, or state of inebriation. Playing off of these concepts, it occurred to us that Waffle House should consider designing the social media presence around that simple tenet — that It is not just Waffle House, it’s a waffle home.

Social Media Audit Results and Insights:

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SOCIAL MEDIA: BIG IDEA

Our big idea resulted from insight from research on social media channels and resulting C2B interactions. It also resulted from the tone and unique approach to availability that Waffle House proudly emphasises within their business model.

This is what we know about the brand so far, Waffle House thrives as an approachable, f riendly and laid-back establishment that serves comforting food at all hours. An insight that I kept seeing was the importance of Waffle House being reliable. Waffle House is open 24/7 and even acts as an informal “Waffle House Index” for FEMA when tracking storms and hurricanes. This is honestly, peak reliability in my mind, even scientists are relying on the local Waffle Houses.

So with that in mind, Waffle House should capitalize its reliability. Research resulted in comments and tweets referencing statements like the following, “Waffle House is a Waffle Home, more like Waffle Home” etc. This love and ability of a restaurant to become a counted on, and treasured part of the family is invaluable. Waffle House should own their reputation and invest in making it a home as an actionable marketing objective. As a testament to their reliability, Waffle House, to many loyal and even new fans is a reliable home, their waffle home.

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SOCIAL MEDIA: PARTICULARS

From our social media audit, it became clear that while Waffle House is active and effectively communicating on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, while other social media channels included in our audit should either be revamped or abandoned altogether. User communication is at the very least weekly and often daily on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, the Waffle House presence on Youtube and Vimeo is generally sparse (for instance Waffle House has only six videos on Vimeo), houses redundant content between the two channels in many cases, and in general not particularly useful. Vimeo in particular seems signif icantly void of any meaningful content, to the extent the we recommend going forward that Waffle House should seriously consider dropping that channel altogether. Similarly, the WH presence on YouTube is minimal. We recommend going forward that either the WH Youtube presence be restructured to include considerably more content of a very engaging nature, to include candid staff videos, interesting customer testimonials (possibly during inclement weather situations), or even user submitted videos containing novel and brand-positive content. Otherwise, like Vimeo, the YouTube presence should be abandoned altogether, as an insignif icant and/or dated presence on these platforms may well be more detrimental to the Waffle House brand than having no presence on those channels at all.

However, our research outside of the social media audit uncovered a potentially lucrative social media channel that Waffle House is currently not leveraging: Snapchat. The Snapchat platform is very popular with one of our primary target demographics, the 18-25 “college crowd” audience, and the platform itself has matured over the past few years to the extent that it can be considered mainstream and a viable social media marketing venue. We brainstormed using the Geofilter function of Snapchat to produce location based f ilters for Waffle House locations. For instance, a Snapchat f ilter using augmented reality to replace a customer’s head with a waffle with a bulldog shaped syrup coating might be extremely popular at WH locations in the Athens, GA area. Regardless of the feasibility of implementing that feature, Waffle House should view Snapchat as a very viable channel for communicating with the younger demographic.

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SOCIAL MEDIA: EXAMPLE CONTENT

Facebook:

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SOCIAL MEDIA: EXAMPLE CONTENT

Instagram:

Caption: Is there anything more classic than a pecan waffle? If it makes you think you are home it’s because you are. #WaffleHome

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SOCIAL MEDIA: EXAMPLE CONTENT

Twitter:

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SOCIAL MEDIA: CONTENT CALENDAR

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BUSINESS OBJECTIVE:METRICS TABLE

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SOCIAL MEDIA: BUDGET TABLE

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Waffles! We’ve got your waffles!” Known all throughout the south, Waffle House is one of the best-known southern breakfast food chains in the southeast. Started in Georgia by co-found-ers Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner, the restaurant has seen a lot of success since its start in 1955. With a mission to “deliver a unique experience to our customers through delivering great food, friendly, attentive service, excellent price and a welcoming presence,” the chain has creat-ed a stream of clientele that refer to the brand as one of their favorites. Much of Waffle House’s success has come from a remarkable standard of word of mouth communication from their customers who rave over the food, service, and overall atmosphere of their local restaurant. With word of mouth being one of the most effective ways to market a business, Waffle House has employed this method f irst. As the world changes, Waffle House has also. Social media has captured a substantial audience across the world. Waffle House has noticed this and expanded their marketing efforts toward targeting those online. The company has created brand pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vimeo, and You-Tube among other smaller platforms. Our research has shown that Waffle House has two main target audiences: younger and older generations. The older generations have been targeted most by word of mouth as well as location-based marketing like in store specials, and interstate billboards. The younger generation has not been targeted as effectively. In order to target them, an effective social media campaign needs to be created across all platforms. Part of the business objectives for 2019 from the company is to increase customer engagement across all channels by 10% by the end of 2019, increase sales amongst 22-24-year-olds by 15% in the southeast by the end of 2019, expand consumer reach across all platforms by 10% by the end of 2019 and to increase customer service related engagement on social by 15% by the end of 2019 namely on Twitter and Facebook. Research into the overall target audience has helped to create campaigns that can achieve the company’s goals. Geographically customers are mostly in the south, but the brand is opening stores across the country so there is no area related targeting. Demographically, psy-chographically, and behaviorally Waffle House can cater to any person in any category, making the campaign targeting all people who eat their style of food. We analyzed the current accounts that Waffle House holds, their engagement, and post-ings. We found that the company has most success of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Overall there is a lot of opportunity across these platforms and engagement from customers has been positive. On average consumers comment at least 50 times a week on the brand Facebook page, 25 times a day on the twitter feed, and 25 comments on Instagram posts. We found that customers mostly engage by sharing stories of their experiences in Waffle House. In analyzing our competitor IHOP’s social channels, we found that Waffle House is far behind in the levels of engagement, and overall social presence across all platforms. Keeping with the generally fun and friendly tone that resonates within Waffle House’s “friendly folk” mantra, our big idea for future social campaigns is to play off the “safe space” envi-ronment Waffle House has come to be known as by creating “Waffle Home.” The three platforms that Waffle House has had success on should continue to be used while Vimeo and YouTube need to be revamped or abandoned altogether. During our research we also targeted a lucrative platform which Waffle House hasn’t taken advantage of which is Snapchat. This platform is very popular with the targeted younger demographic. Because of our research we have estimated that a budget be set at $34,100 for social media marketing for 2019. This budget will accomplish objectives across social channels such as increasing overall engagement, customer related ser-vice engagement, consumer reach, overall awareness, and an increase in promotional content across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Yelp. The budget also accounts for the creation of a Snapchat account, creating Waffle House geofilters for college towns, and increasing the plat-forms reach by 2,000 followers by the end of 2019. Using the research we have gathered about Waffle House, its competitors, its marketing initiatives and its social usage, we believe the campaign to turn Waffle House’s reputation from just a restaurant into a “Waffle Home” is the best way to target the younger audiences across multiple platforms while staying true to Waffle House’s mission statement of their business plan.