Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap
Chicago Pub Gets Worldwide Attention with Waiver Wings!
Print Coverage
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Television Coverage (click to view clip)
Situation Analysis
Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap, a neighborhood joint in Chicago, offers sports bar fare: burgers, fries, nachos…and wings. Our charge was to put this local favorite on the national map in time for Super Bowl, two weeks away.
Creative Tactic
We did what Quinn & Co. Public Relations does best: our food PR team huddled in our Dream Room to find ways to give Jake Melnick’s a name outside of Chicago.
We got stuck on wings as media’s most-talked-about Super Bowl food. We asked ourselves: “How do we offer the best hot wings on the planet, and prove it?”
The result: Waiver Wings – wings so hot, you need to sign a waiver. We knew of Red Savina, a Guinness World Record-holding pepper that required a waiver in the U.S. because of its dangerously high position on the Scoville Scale (a standardized measurement to determine pepper heat). We found the Red Savina, which Jake’s added to the Waiver Wing sauce.
Results
We offered Reuters the exclusive. It ran three hours later. Three hours and one minute later, we began pitching and fielding media queries about the Waiver Wings story.
More than 12.5 million Americans heard about Waiver Wings within three days of the launch. Word spread globally to Iraq, India, Germany and more. Wing sales increased 400% during Super Bowl season compared to the previous year. Ad equivalency for the month topped $1.5 million. Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap’s “Wall of Flame” continues to grow daily with pictures of heat-seeking diners and their favorite hot wings.
