THUNDER BAY — Why did the chicken cross the road? To appear on a billboard advertising Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen in front of the Popeye’s Supplement store a few blocks away.
“And it’s in our parking lot, about 10 feet away from our store sign and our front door,” said Shaun Ireland, Popeye’s Supplement owner in Thunder Bay.
“When one of my buddies actually pointed it out...I thought it was almost like a slap in the face, but then I kind of looked at it and laughed...and decided to not let it affect our business.”
Ireland and his staff are making the best of it.
“I thought about a few different ways of trying to handle the situation,” he said. “For now, any customers that walk in thinking of (the other) Popeyes, we are going to give them a discount card and tell them this isn’t the chicken place,” Ireland said.
“We will ask them if they ever considered taking a supplement and we’ll give them a one-time discount on their first purchase to make the best of it.”
Ireland said over the years his supplement store received the odd phone call or person walking in, asking to place a chicken dinner order, thinking that they were the Popeyes restaurant.
“Since the restaurant opened, in the first week or two we had about 30 to 40 phone calls a day of people trying to place orders for chicken,” he said.
Ireland added that during the few weeks prior to the restaurant’s opening, Popeye’s Supplements had at least two contractors per week coming in the store asking where stoves and fridges needed to be installed and where other jobs or installations should go.
He said he pointed to “the Popeyes down the street.”
Grace Yue, Popeyes Canada Brand marketing director, didn’t say much about the strategy of the marketing ploy nor did she imply that they have installed similar billboards in other cities with the same two businesses, but she says the location was well chosen.
“We couldn’t pick a better location for our latest advertisement, great neighbours with an even greater name,” she said in an email.
Meanwhile, Ireland and his staff are having fun with it and politely tell customers looking for chicken that they are in the wrong place and direct them to the restaurant.
Ireland said, “We let them know what we do as a business and when they walk into our store asking about chicken, we offer that discount card so they can at least kind of think of our products and come back next time.”
The Chronical Journal
