Restaurants · QSR
·
Franchise — national brand + local store
·
Media, social, creative
Bubbakoo's Burritos is one of the fastest-growing better-burrito franchises in the country — a national brand made up of locally operated stores. ARSNL runs the media program: national brand work that builds the category position, and local store marketing that puts feet through doors unit by unit. The Cinco de Mayo campaign alone drove a step-change in traffic.
Client
Bubbakoo's Burritos
Format
Better-burrito QSR· Franchise
Scope
Media, social, short-form video, campaign creative, local store marketing
Audience
National QSR diners + trade-area customers at the store level
The brief
Franchise QSR is two marketing problems sharing one P&L. The national brand has to build category position, run cultural moments, and bring customers into the consideration set. The stores have to turn that consideration into traffic in their trade area — week in, week out, with local offers, promotions, and creative that fits each market.
Bubbakoo's needed media that worked on both fronts without burning budget on either. The discipline: same brand idea, same creative system, audience and offer tuned by store.
What we did
- National brand media. Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and programmatic against QSR-relevant audiences, with creative that holds the category position the brand has worked to build.
- Local store marketing. Trade-area targeting, offers, and creative variants at the unit level — the same operating model run across the system.
- Cultural moments. Cinco de Mayo as a tentpole. Big idea, big creative, big push.
- Short-form video and social. Reels and TikTok creative cut for the category — food shots, in-store, and product hero moments.
- Reporting. National brand metrics and unit-level traffic together, in one view the franchisor and operators can act on.
Selected work
Creative · Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo tentpole.
Big idea, big creative, big push — the campaign that delivered +165% YoY growth.
Media · Local store marketing
Local store marketing.
One creative system with audience and offer tuned by store — the operating model now running the system.
The results
+165%
YoY growth on the Cinco de Mayo campaign.
National + local
One media program running brand and trade-area performance side by side.
Cultural
Tentpole moments that push category position and store traffic together.
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Why it worked
Most franchise QSR media leans national-only and hopes the stores benefit, or leans local-only and starves the brand. The Bubbakoo's program runs both lanes from one creative system, on one set of channels, measured together. The Cinco moment showed the upside when both lanes pull in the same direction.
The same operating model now runs across our wider restaurant practice — Smokey Bones and BurgerFi sit in the same playbook.
Next case
Smokey Bones
All work
What's next
Then let's plan to get there.
