Wendy's Garden Salad Sensations Case Study

I looked into Wendy's Garden Sensations case study that Ketchum helped Wendy's launch back in 2002.

Wend'ys noticed a decrease in market share due to higher-end fast food restaurants offering a healthier substitute for health conscious consumers. The company knew it needed to add something to its menu to compensate for its lack of healthier items, such as salads.

Wendy's introduced Garden Salad Sensations, a line of specialty salads including: Mandarin Chicken salad, Chicken Caesar salad, Southwest Taco salad and Chicken BLT salad.

Ketchum traveled to Wendy's 36 top markets within two weeks. More than 2,000 salads were delivered to target reporters, newsrooms and morning show producers/crews. I thought this was a clever way to target food experts as well as health advocates and get them to spark interest and support Wendy's newly added salads.

Through Ketchum's strategic planning and lauch efforts, Wendys received more than 300 hits within a six-month period regarding the new salads and the media persuaded the public to try the salads (95 percent gave the new salads rave reviews, 90 percent categorized Wendy's salads among the best fast food for good helath). The majority of the same-store sales increase that amounted to 6.6 percent was from Wendy's new salads and Wendy's documented record sales weeks following the launch of the salads.