Local Baltimore Restaurant Uses Foursquare to Stay Relevant in the Digital Age

Situation: Miss Shirley’s is an immensely popular brunch spot  in downtown Baltimore. Their food is highly regarded as some of the best and has won coveted awards such as the Best Sandwich in Baltimore by Baltimore Magazine and Best Breakfast Dish in all of Maryland by the Food Network Magazine. The restaurant is so popular in fact, that the wait for a table during peak brunch hours can be up to two hours. By anyone’s standards Miss Shirley’s is a successful restaurant. But where do you go from there? Sure the food is great, the reputation is strong, and business is booming, but Miss Shirley’s is faced with the challenge of maintaining a regular clientele interested in return visits and creating a buzz that keeps people talking about and seeking out their locations, all the while staying relevant in a digital age.

Solution: Miss Shirley and company with the help of MGH Marketing agency took to Foursquare, a relatively new social networking site that allows user to “check in” on their mobile device where ever they go and broadcast their location to their friends. Think Twitter meets Yelp. Foursquare then takes it a step further by making a game out of it, one can earn badges for going more places or become “mayor” of a location, signifying that you have checked in to that place the most times in the past sixty days. Foursquare has allowed businesses to get highly creative with promotions and marketing.

Miss Shirley’s, in a most ingenious way, created a campaign where their Foursquare mayor never has to wait for a table. That’s right, remember that two hour line? If you happen to be Miss Shirley’s number one customer, as confirmed by Foursquare, you get to skip the whole thing. (Up to four people can be in your party). Foursquare currently only has 1.8 million users, so in order to direct people to the promotion the restaurant has put up signs and includex information cards with every check to explain the service and the promotion.

Results: Since the promotion launched in April, Miss Shirley’s has seen a 427% increase in Foursquare check ins. The current mayor of their Roland Park location has been their 23 times in the past sixty days. While Miss Shirley’s can’t confirm an increase in business yet, the positive buzz from press coverage, blog posts, and anecdotal accounts has been enough to warrant the strategy a success. Using this particular social media promotion has also put the marketing leg work into the hands of the customer. By checking in more and Tweeting more, directly about Miss Shirley’s, they’re indirectly saying to their friends and followers, “Hey, you should check this place out.” With very little effort put in from the restaurant itself.

Foursquare is a brilliant new tool for businesses looking to gain some traction in the digital space. Marrying the real world and the online world. Besides giveaways for the “mayor,” one could dream up any number of ideas on how to reward Foursquare users for checking into their locale. And thanks to the social media site’s youth and rapid growth rate, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface on the possibilities.

Foursquare provides a page with options specifically designed for businesses looking to market with the site.

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