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Not just winging it
Lube Nation helps Quaker Steak & Lube make connection online
By Karl Henkel
AUSTINTOWN
When Sharon, Pa.- based Quaker Steak & Lube decided to open a location in Denver — the farthest west the 37-year-old company has ventured — it knew exactly who to entrust.
They’re called Lubeys, a nearly quarter-million strong group of cult online followers from QS&L’s various social-media platforms.
After residents questioned what exactly Quaker Steak was (yes, some thought it was a gas station), the company went to work informing the mile-high city what it was all about.
“We needed to find a way to connect with that local community,” said Marla Pieton, senior director of marketing for QS&L. “With not having the huge advertising funds, the social-media aspect was a way to connect personally with them.”
Better yet, it worked. QS&L’s Denver debut was a smashing success and company officials said it was difficult to find a seat the first few weeks.
QS&L knew who to thank: Lube Nation, made up of Lubeys, which is continually growing and has helped the company earn national recognition for its social-media endeavors.
Most recently, it participated in a March Madness-style Twitter tournament sponsored by Business2Community, a business, technology and social media conglomerate website. QS&L outlasted 63 other companies such as Groupon, Scottrade and Chili’s Bar & Grill in a consumer-driven tweet-off.
QS&L generated more than 16,000 #BizMadness tweets and easily won by more than 4,000.
Brian Rice, owner of Business2Community, said Quaker Steak made the most of its 225,000 Facebook followers, and generated about half of the total votes.
“They did a fantastic job of engaging their followers on Facebook and Twitter,” Rice said. “Specifically their time spent cultivating the one-to-one relationships and then spreading the word.”
Rice said he was impressed with QS&L because it’s relatively smaller than companies such as Chili’s, which didn’t promote the competition on its social-media outlets and didn’t garner a considerable vote total.
It also made Entrepreneur magazine’s list of 2011 Franchises in Social Media list, checking in at No. 59 out of 500 ranked companies.
The social-media spectrum is a necessity for QS&L, which has 43 locations in 14 states and Canada, if it wants to remain relevant with hot-wing national powerhouse Buffalo Wild Wings, one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the nation.
So far, the privately-owned Quaker Steak has expanded its reach (such as in Colorado) by adding 14 new locations the past handful of years. It has also seen gross sales increase 44 percent since 2007, reaching nearly $110 million in 2010.
Pieton credits the growth in part to the Lubers and to Quaker Steak’s marketing activity coordinators, or MACs, which are stationed at each location and are empowered to connect with the community through social media. QS&L even has statistics to back it up.
In a recent survey of consumers, three in four said they originally heard about the restaurant through word of mouth, and not advertising.
B3Ws regularly runs nationwide television advertisements (“send it into overtime”), while QS&L locations spend only 2 percent of sales on local marketing.
To make up the difference, Quaker Steak says it will continue to focus locally using social media, and that its cult following should continue to help it prosper.
“People just love to interact with it as opposed to a radio message where you hear it and then it’s over,” said Megan Duniak, marketing director for company restaurants.
The company’s Facebook platform has already begun to diversify.
Duniak said at the Austintown location, QS&L has begun taking orders online, and they hope to soon add an option for customers to place orders via Facebook, but said that plan is still “a little bit down the road.”