“Chili’s has always had a history of really having fun with advertising and trying to be in the zeitgeist or pop culture,” Hochman told Fortune. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously. You can be silly about the burger because at the end of the day, we’re just selling burgers and booze.”
Not only has Chili’s been the proverbial talk of the town, but it has the hard data to show for its success: The chain reported a 24% spike in sales and 16% jump in traffic this quarter.
Felix told Marketing Dive that while Chili’s attracts customers in a variety of ways, the marketing push behind its Scranton restaurant leaned toward a “millennial, nostalgic audience.”
“That was certainly a nostalgia play, but the interesting part about that is, there’s all of us that watched it when it was on, and now it’s had this whole resurgence… that really expands generations,” he said. “It started as a nostalgia play, but I think it also resonates with the younger audience in a fun way.”
Meanwhile, TikTok and other social-media platforms have been flooded with videos of cheese pulls from the mozzarella sticks as part of the Triple Dipper appetizer platter and Chili’s own social-media team leans into absurdity and humor with many of its own posts.
“These are just cool things that a brand that is fun and doesn’t take themselves too seriously are going to lean into,” Hochman told Fortune. “I do think that guests appreciate that, because at the end of the day, they know we’re not corporate stiff types, that we’re just kind of like them. We just want to have fun, and we want them to see that.”
