Leading Restaurant Franchises Appoint SOCi as Global Platform of Record for Localized Marketing

Bar Louie, Cinnaholic, Mountain Mike’s Pizza, Shari’s, and Veggie Grill are some of the latest tapping SOCi as their singular partner for managing and optimizing their localized presence

Originally published on Business Wire on September 24, 2020.

SAN DIEGO—August 13, 2020— SOCi, the leading all-in-one platform for next-level multi-location marketers, announced that it has been named the localized marketing platform of record for several restaurant brands. Bar Louie – The Original Gastrobar, Cinnaholic, Mountain Mike’s Pizza, Shari’s, and Veggie Grill will now leverage SOCi to unify their presence across hundreds and thousands of local search, social and ratings and reviews pages across the United States.   “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, businesses of all shapes and sizes continue to face uncertainty and new challenges. The restaurant industry has been hit especially hard as many remain closed, or open with restrictions in place,” said Afif Khoury, CEO and Founder of SOCi. “Communicating with customers across many locations has never been more important, and we are honored to be working with these national brands to help strengthen their ability to reach customers, and thrive, at the individual location level.”   Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, US restaurants have lost more than $185 billion, according to the National Restaurant Association as state and local governments have imposed restrictions around capacity, hours, and indoor dining to prevent the spread of the virus. With so many changes, it’s critical for restaurants to leverage localized platforms like Facebook, Google My Business, and Yelp to communicate updates to their community and keep customers engaged. In fact, according to recent research from Forrester and SOCi, an optimized localized marketing strategy is associated with greater brand alignment, increased foot traffic, improved marketing efficiencies at the local level, and better brand trust on a local level.   “During the pandemic, our hours of operation have been frequently changing as we continue to figure out how to navigate this new reality,” said Heather Stennis, Director of Marketing at Cinnaholic. “Our partnership with SOCi has made managing our online presence much simpler and gives us one less thing to worry about. SOCi helps us work toward building brand awareness and increasing sales at our franchised locations with simple solutions to seamlessly make updates to our online presence and schedule our social content across multiple sites in a single platform.”   SOCi offers multi-location marketers a comprehensive solution to manage their brand’s online presence, which is proven to be an important and effective strategy to engage with consumers. 71% of marketers who have adopted a single solution have experienced positive results, and are able to improve customer experience, the use of data in decision making, differentiate from competitors, and meet top organizational priorities.   “Having one individual platform to manage our reputation and engagement with our guests is crucial, and SOCi is the ideal fit for Mountain Mike’s,” said Carol DeNembo, Vice President, Marketing at Mountain Mike’s Pizza. “We love that SOCi is a franchise-friendly, easy-to-use platform and it gives us the ability to be more efficient and productive with our guest recovery efforts and overall brand reputation.”   “Bar Louie, at its core, is a brand that was built on local store marketing and we recognize that each of our local communities have different preferences, behaviors, and needs,” said Kayla Dillon, Bar Louie’s Director of Marketing. “SOCi offers a singular source of truth for our overall online presence and empowers our team with the insights needed to effectively engage with customers on the local level.”   SOCi works with more than 370 companies to effectively manage local search, social, reviews, and ad campaigns for over 65,000 individual business locations and is well equipped to help marketers navigate unprecedented challenges as they continue to adapt to changing local regulations and safety measures. They were recently named a 2020 Top Franchise Supplier by Entrepreneur Magazine, and won “Best Marketing Resource Management Platform” at the 2020 Martech Breakthrough Awards. To learn more about how SOCi can optimize your multi-location business’s digital presence in a single platform, please visit www.meetsoci.com.