This year, Nation's Restaurant News launched a brand new video series, Snapshot of Success, which showcases restaurants' achievements and leadership. In this series, Marco’s Pizza made it on the most-viewed video list by trying to be the fourth largest pizza chain. In late 2019, Marco’s released a national ad campaign to bring awareness to the brand. The chain had also just launched an app and updated its tech suite around the same time, thanks to Steve Seyferth’s influence as CMO at the time. Basically, the chain was ready for the pandemic.
While most restaurants are scrambling to add drive-thru and pickup lanes and shrink their footprint, Manasquan, N.J.-based sandwich chain Jersey Mike’s is confident in their longstanding format: 1,000-1,400-square-foot stores doing mostly pickup and takeout. But what has changed over the past year during the pandemic is Jersey Mike’s digital growth, which grew 180% from last April to this March.
An interview with Jersey Mike’s CEO discusses their immense digital growth and success despite the challenges of the pandemic. The first quarter of 2021 saw same-store sales up 40%, which Peter Cancro attributes to the investments they made just before the pandemic in relaunching their mobile app in 2019.
Also on this list is an interview with president Travis Boersma of Dutch Bros on how they navigated the multiple crises of 2020 and emerged stronger in 2021.
“We're in the relationship business. The product is love,” Boersma said. “We're all about trying to figure out how to persevere through trying, challenging times, and hope is the name of the game.”
Click through the gallery to check out which other video made it on this years top performing videos.