A View From The Top

How COVID-19 forced The Halal Guys to change marketing tactics

Ahmed Abouelenein, CEO of The Halal Guys, discusses how the New York-based chain's marketing tactics differ from pre-pandemic days.

Ahmed Abouelenein, CEO of The Halal Guys, discusses how the New York-based chain's marketing tactics differ from pre-pandemic days. Provided

March 17, 2021

By Ahmed Abouelenein, CEO, The Halal Guys

We at The Halal Guys, being headquartered in New York City, had the misfortune of having a front-row seat as the pandemic started to assert itself here in the early days of March 2020.

Watching the news and reading the papers it became apparent, this city, this industry, and our business was going to have a challenging next few months. We didn't know how challenging nor did we know how long that challenge would last, but things were going to be different.

We immediately introduced and enhanced safety standards like requiring masks at all locations, incorporating social distancing indicators, executing frequent and thorough sanitation procedures, adding plexiglass partitions, sealing takeout and delivery orders with safety stickers and so on. Our top priority was to ensure our customers and employees would continue to feel safe ordering from and working at The Halal Guys.

Fast forward to summer of 2020, New York City, like much of the country was starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Many of the markets we operate across the United States and even our international locations were easing restrictions and allowing a small return to business and life as it was pre-COVID.

We are very fortunate to have a hero product, our world-famous platter, that does well with takeout and delivery, but the reopening of cities and states for us meant welcoming guests back to our restaurants, not just serving them through takeout and delivery. After months of pausing all marketing and promotional activity, it was time for us to resume, albeit cautiously.

Our earliest pandemic-era marketing tactics were more focused on communicating our dedication to the safety of our guests and team members. We realized the pandemic was being handled in very different ways in each of the markets we operated in and knew we needed to have an effective channel to communicate how restrictions and limitations would affect the customer experience in each of those markets. We immediately got to work revamping our website and introduced local pages on our website, giving each individual locations their own micro-site where things like hours of operation, capacity limitations and other important safety-related information could be communicated. These micro-sites also allowed us to communicate local promotions, partnerships and charitable involvement.

Another notable feature that we included in the website relaunch was a blog site. A way for us to communicate our overall brand direction and approach as it related to the ever-evolving pandemic. We felt it was critical, not only for our guests, but also for our employees and our franchise community, to have constant, up-to-date access to all of the information detailing our efforts to ensure that every The Halal Guys location remains a safe and reliable destination during this challenging time.

The pandemic meant embracing third-party delivery. Simply stated, many of our guests didn't feel safe coming into restaurants. We had to get our food to them in ways they were comfortable with. While it wasn't the most financially beneficial way for us to operate, we know our food offers a comfort and in many cases, a sense of nostalgia that creates a temporary escape. So, we leveraged our partnerships with third-party providers to offer free delivery. We viewed it as a marketing campaign and were very pleased with its success.

Finally, and most importantly for us, was our 30th Anniversary campaign. It had been 30 years since we first started as a hot dog cart on the streets of midtown New York City! While we started the year with grandiose plans of celebratory events, as the month of March unfolded we began to realize those events weren't likely to take place as we had hoped. With months of planning out the window, we pivoted to a more digital approach. We offered a signature, limited-production hoodie to every 30th customer, but the tactic that garnered us the most attention was our "1990 pricing". For one day only, guests could get our world-famous platter for just $5 — the same price they would have paid in 1990.

The year of 2020 began with tremendous optimism and excitement around our expected growth, the new menu items we would introduce and the new guests we would serve. The pandemic, however, meant reevaluating all of it. The exciting campaigns we had planned were replaced with messages of reassurance, of safety, but ultimately we were able to finish the year with one of the most successful campaigns in our brand's history.

There are undoubtedly going to be continued challenges as the pandemic lingers into 2021, but we continue to be optimistic about both ours and the industry's path forward.

Marketing