Boston Pizza is one of Canada’s leading casual dining restaurants with over 175 stores, and

take-out and delivery (TOD) being a small but growing part of their business, as Millennials are ordering in more than their parents’ generation.

But with the rise of food delivery options like UBEReats and Foodora, Boston Pizza’s takeout and delivery (TOD) business has been suffering. Suddenly, BP was now competing with basically any restaurant in the country. And losing their space in the minds of millennials.

They wanted to take back some of that TOD business. But with so many other priorities - menu changes, restaurant upgrades, and other LTOs, - they didn’t have much money to do it. Just $50K. All in.

To compete with the recent innovations to the food delivery business, we innovated on the one thing synonymous with pizza delivery – the box. By creating the first ever pizza box designed for eating pizza in bed.

To reach our millennial target, we introduced BP in Bed over Boston Pizza’s social channels with a promotional video, giving a limited edition run of boxes away to their most loyal fans. And to reach an audience and create organic word-of-mouth, PR focused on press outlets popular with millennials.

An unassuming pizza box transforms into a self-sustaining table that allows you to comfortably eat pizza in bed. Built entirely with food-safe materials the box was developed, prototyped and stress-tested for months to easily transform in a few easy steps.

Not only did the box need to stand up to the pressure of an extra-large five-topping thick crust pizza, it also had to work in the unique environment where it would be in use. Average leg circumference vs. the average depth one sinks into their bed was just one of many considerations pined over by a team of structural engineers, product designers and pizza delivery men and women.

A short video that demonstrated how the box transforms was released online, with 50 boxes in total being built.

Taking a PR-first approach, and spending zero media dollars, we targeted food, design, lifestyle, mainstream and pizza-focused press outlets and received coverage from GQ, NowThis, Vanity Fair, CNET, LADbible and The Dieline to name a few. Leading to more than 160,000 organic shares, 7.3 million organic views, and generating more than 558 million organic impressions, the equivalent of approximately $6,348,000.00 in media spend.

Most importantly however, BP in Bed drove sales for Boston Pizza.

The hype surrounding the box generated a spike in TOD sales of 4.66% vs the same period in 2017 (a 233% increase over the 2% objective). As a result, SSSG increased by +20 basis points, and average guest check improved by 2.9% over a year ago.