NEWPORT BEACH Calif. Specialty hot dog purveyor Wienerschnitzel, based here, earlier this month began offering cellular phone and PDA users digital coupons good for buy-one-get-one-free chili-cheese dogs and discounted chili-cheese fries at 165 Southern California units.
Wienerschnitzel customers have access to the digital coupons via their Web-enabled phones or wireless PDAs after subscribing to Cellfire Inc.'s mobile coupon service at www.cellfire.com. They also can secure coupons by sending the text message "hotdog" to 22888.
"We use coupons to encourage trial of new menu items and old favorites, so it made sense for us to go mobile with coupons to reach our target audience of young males in California," according to Tom Amberger, vice president of marketing for the 350-unit Wienerschnitzel chain owned by Galardi Group. He noted that the "cost effective" Cellfire program "has extremely high redemption rates" compared to traditional paper coupons.