Built By The People. Then Devoured By Them.

Challenge: Awareness of a highly customizable menu to an audience set in its ways.
Solution: Turned menu exploration into a competition and let the audience decide what wins.
Results: A boost in engagement, sales and menu hacking.

Lion’s Choice // Sandwich Smackdown

Challenge

For decades, Lion’s Choice customers came in for the classic slow-roasted beef sandwich and left without ever discovering what else the menu could do. Ham, turkey, specialty cheeses, varied buns, mac & cheese…baked potatoes? A genuinely customizable lineup was quietly going unordered while the brand needed new visits, younger demographics and loyalty sign-ups without discounting its way there.

The opportunity was sitting right on the menu. It just needed a reason to be noticed.

Solution

We invented The Ultimate Sandwich Smackdown: a bracket-style tournament that gamified menu exploration and turned customers into creatives.

Phase one: A dedicated landing page and social teaser campaign built around the promise of a bedazzled championship belt. Loyalty program rewards sweetened the customer ask. Fans submitted over 500 unique sandwich builds in just two weeks.

Phase two: We curated the top 16 entries by culinary feasibility, flavor balance and brand fit, then ran a four-round elimination bracket on social media that collected 6,700+ votes and generated the kind of comment section energy money can’t buy.

Phase three: A live VIP judging event brought together local culinary experts, superfans and influencers to taste the two finalists. A St. Louis chef took the belt with El Cubano, a Cuban-inspired twist on Lion’s Choice roast beef that spiked immediate interest. Phase four: El Cubano became a permanent menu item, backed by an integrated campaign across digital video, OOH billboards and in-store POS featuring the winner holding the championship belt alongside “Fan-Created, Fan-Selected” messaging.

Results

Day One: 600. Week One: 4,000.

El Cubano launched with an audience already rooting for it, accounting for 10% of total sales out of the gate.
6.5% YoY Sales Lift

Driven by a 2.9% increase in average check size and a 9.6% surge in digital orders, menu exploration translated directly to revenue.
Social Engagement Up 224%

Over 17,000 total interactions. 105,000+ people reached. Video views up 819% compared to the prior 60 days, with 11,000+ organic views.
A Dynamic Menu

El Cubano became a core seller and the Smackdown permanently encouraged menu hacking, a behavior supported by ongoing social content.