Case Study
P.J. Whelihan's: Driving Engagement and Building a Brand
Overview
With 26 locations across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the PJW Restaurant Group operates a series of unique concepts geared to beer fans—everything from sports bars and pour houses to a fine dining steakhouse, taqueria concept, and pizza bar. But, the majority of their locations fall under the P.J. Whelihan’s Pub + Restaurant concept, a sports bar known for the perfect blend of good food (such as PJ’s Famous wings), great beer and drinks, and fun in a relaxed atmosphere.
Challenges
Operating a high number of establishments poses its own unique set of challenges. From a beer perspective, each location has its own drink menu that needs to be constantly maintained and updated. The partnership between PJW and Untappd began in 2017 with our Pour House concept, which is a craft beer bar known for offering an expansive beer list and great pub food. The three locations operating under this brand were continuously making updates to their beer list as a way to stay relevant with customer trends and demands.
Solution
For about the last four years, the PJW organization has been leveraging Untappd to help organize and implement each location’s beer and drinks menu. From creating custom digital and print menus to curating bespoke training materials for its staff, PJW has partnered with Untappd for a comprehensive, easy-to-use solution. Bringing each restaurant onto the Untappd platform made these updates much easier and allowed them to ensure that they were communicating the most up-to-date options to guests through print and digital menus.
So far with over 300k menu views, almost 15k check-ins, and just under 10k unique users, the P.J. Whelihan’s experience with Untappd for Business has been overwhelmingly beneficial for a majority of its businesses.
300,000
Menu Views
15,000
Check-in's
10,000
Unique Users
Seeing the success of the Untappd platform within the Pour House locations, about a year and a half ago, we made the decision to bring the majority of our P.J. Whelihan’s locations on Untappd. Given that this would be a new platform for most of our managers, I worked really closely with our Enterprise Account Manager Tara [Ellington] to pull together a robust training guide and materials to help ensure our teams had a solid understanding how to manage their beer lists through the Untappd platform, including: creating menus, editing menus and publishing menus. This process made the initial onboarding process an overwhelming success and is also useful as new team members join the organization.
Kristen Foord, Marketing Director at PJW Restaurant Group
About Untappd
Untappd is the world’s largest social network for the beer community with over 9M registered users, 165K monthly downloads, and 15M check-ins each month and over 1B check-ins all-time. Users share and discover beer while connecting with new businesses and friends. Beer enthusiasts engage with Untappd for Business partners through the mobile app, providing businesses with valuable data and analytics in real time. The Untappd for Business platform not only helps businesses gain exposure to a targeted market, but partners also leverage a database of over 2M beers. The all-in-one menu publishing toolkit syncs social accounts, websites, print and digital menus, and Untappd profiles in one click. Businesses save time by posting content to Facebook and Twitter pages from the Untappd for Business dashboard. Untappd for Business partners stand out on the app by showcasing events and specials and alerting subscribers to new beers and events via push notifications.