Restaurants
·
Fast casual · 120+ units
·
Media AOR · 2021–2022
ARSNL was Media AOR for BurgerFi from 2021 through 2022 — the chain’s peak growth period. The work covered corporate, co-op and individual franchisee media across a 120+ unit footprint, with a unified-view dashboard that gave every spending tier the same line of sight. The result was the brand’s best top-line sales performance, positive comps, record revenue, and grand openings that pre-loaded demand instead of crushing operations.
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Client
BurgerFi
Footprint
120+ fast casual units
Scope
Media AOR — paid social, programmatic, search, apps
Era
2021–2022, through peak growth
The brief
BurgerFi was scaling fast across a mixed company-owned and franchise system. The job was to fuel topline growth through brand awareness and trial while creating media efficiencies across corporate and franchisee spends — and to keep a complex network of company plus franchisee ad accounts, reporting and billing all moving in the same direction.
What we did
- Integrated, omnichannel media. Planning and buying across paid social, programmatic, search and apps.
- High-impact brand building paired with first-ever trial offers. at critical moments — e.g., branded pins with offer in the Waze app.
- Push-to-app media. so brand-building dollars drove sustainable marketing opportunities post-grand-opening and inside every existing location.
- Unified-view dashboard. showing total media spend, impressions, and impact for each location across every spending tier — designed to make budgets work in a mixed corporate-and-franchise system.
- Network operations. Managed company-plus-franchisee ad accounts, reporting and billing as one connected system.
Selected work
Creative · National brand
National brand creative.
Premium-tier creative for a category where the brand sits above the better-burger middle.
Digital · App and loyalty
The repeat-customer engine.
App-led performance media that drives orders, loyalty signups, and retention.
Media · Local store marketing
Same brand. Every market.
Trade-area targeting and offers, run as one system across the franchise.
The results
Best ever
Top-line sales performance. Positive comps and record revenue.
Record
App downloads at a downstream conversion cost that outperformed drive-to-ecommerce sales.
Best openings
Grand opening performance pre-loaded demand by building app installs — relieving operations-killing opening-day giveaway rushes.
Franchisee trust
Efficient promos that won the trust of franchisees through full spending transparency.
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Why it worked
The Waze branded-pin work and the push-to-app media weren’t separate plays — they were the same play. Brand impressions had to convert into installs, installs had to convert into orders, and every dollar had to appear on one dashboard so franchisees could see exactly what they were getting.
That visibility is what let the system scale: corporate, co-op and franchisee all working from the same numbers, with promos that earned the next conversation instead of forcing it.
Next case
Bubbakoo's Burritos
All work
What's next
Then let's plan to get there.
