Freebirds World Burrito’s new vice president of marketing, Erin Levzow, says she sees an exciting landscape for digital storytelling.
Levzow joined Austin, Texas-based Freebirds, a division of the Tavistock Group, after two years leading the digital, social and customer relationship management at Dallas-based Wingstop Inc.
At Freebirds, Levzow oversees social media, website management, customer relationship management, media planning and buying, analytics and online ordering.
“As we look to grow our brand, we are excited to have someone with her level of expertise on our team to lead our marketing efforts,” said Charles B. Lewis, chairman of Freebirds World Burrito and Tavistock Restaurant Collection.
Prior to Wingstop, Levzow worked in Las Vegas as the executive director of marketing and e-commerce at the Palms Casino Resort.
Freebirds, founded in 1987, has 100 fast-casual restaurants in Texas, California, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah and Oklahoma. Units generally are 2,100 to 2,500 square feet and average 70 interior seats and 30 on patios.
Levzow spoke with Nation’s Restaurant News about her new position, which she assumed in late June.
What are you seeing happen in the digital-marketing space?
Digital is something I’ve always been passionate about, back to my almost 10 years in [Las] Vegas. Digital is exciting. I think executives of the future will have a digital-analytical background. Our entire world is going digital, not just desktop-laptop-mobile. Everything we do has a digital undertone to it. So being able to look at that and garner the right data is the exciting part.
What’s it doing to traditional advertising?
Even billboards and TV advertising is going digital. It’s very exciting. You can put beacons on billboards to message someone as they drive by. You can target based on a set-top box for a TV, which becomes a digital buy. All these things in digital media are becoming engrained in all media.
How do you see that fitting into Freebirds?
It’s the whole consumer experience. For Freebirds, it’s tying from Point A to Point B. It’s going through the whole journey with the customer and helping tell a story. While we are concentrated in a few states, we can buy very targeted digital advertising to target around where our restaurants are located, which is an effective use of our media dollars.
What do you see as these efficiencies in marketing the Freebirds brand?
The efficiencies come in being able to target tighter around each restaurants so we don’t have any marketing waste or media waste that way. … We’ll be able to figure out what works for this restaurant, but we want to tweak it for this restaurant. That’s pretty exciting.
What in digital are you keeping an eye on?
It’s the idea that you can tie everything together. It sounds kind of creepy, but it’s knowing from the beginning to the end when someone looks for you on their phone, moves to their desktop, sees your television ads and then walks into your restaurant — and you know they are there. Digital in general is exciting: that attribution to knowing how the whole journey came together and giving credit — knowing what worked and what didn’t.
Freebirds is known for its burritos, but what are other popular items?
Our guacamole is outstanding. And all our items are from a scratch kitchen. The burrito bowl is my new-found love.
How about dietary concerns?
Quite a few of our items are vegan-friendly. And we have what we call Calabacitas, which is a soy-based tempeh product in it. It’s a meat option. My husband is a vegan, and he eats it all the time. Mixed with vegetables, it’s great.
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