UFood Restaurant Group Inc., parent of the fast-casual UFood Grill chain, has tapped public relations firm The Castle Group to improve the brand’s social-media presence and to help it expand into a new nontraditional forum — military bases.
UFood’s chief operating officer Charlie Cocotas said that while The Castle Group in Boston has both expertise in managing social-media strategies and established relationships with the military community, the two strengths will address separate brand needs going forward.
He said opening locations on domestic military bases marks the next step in UFood’s nontraditional-growth strategy, which depends upon the brand’s ability to leverage word-of-mouth through social media and public relations.
“Social media has become the dominant vehicle for businesses and consumers to communicate, and we want to evolve with it,” Cocotas said.
Boston-based UFood has eight units: three traditional standalone restaurants in Boston, four outlets at airports in Boston, Dallas and Cleveland, and one location in a Dallas hospital. The chain also has several franchise agreements in place, most of which call for units to be located in onsite venues, including one at the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C.
“We’ve found that we’re successful in those nontraditional venues,” Cocotas said, “and we believe, particularly with airports, that we’ll get exposure to a large number of consumers with all that passenger traffic. In traditional units, you have to spend a lot of money with traditional advertising.
But, he continued, “We haven’t taken our eye off traditional expansion, either. We’re going to embark on an aggressive plan to grow that way in 2011 as well.”
The company’s plans for locating UFood units on military bases are limited only to domestic installations, Cocotas said.
UFood’s focus on more healthful fare has made the concept suitable for growth in healthful-lifestyle-oriented venues like hospitals, military installations and college campuses, Cocotas said. He noted that UFood’s health halo also flies with customers at airports as more travelers are seeking nutritious options.
“One of the amazing things we’ve learned getting into the airport business is that customers, including business travelers and airport personnel, as well as normal passengers on vacation, are all demanding more nutritional alternatives,” Cocotas said. “The awareness of better nutrition is increasing dramatically, particularly with the types of demographics of people who travel extensively.”
UFood began as LoFat NoFat in Watertown, Mass., in 1997, but the company changed its name to UFood Grill in 2007, several years after its acquisition by George Naddaff and other investors. Naddaff previously developed Boston Chicken, which became Boston Market. He also led grilled-chicken concept Ranch*1.
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
