Last weekend I was at the mall with my daughters, scarfing down pizza at Sbarro’s (which proudly states on it’s website that it’s the world’s largest mall restaurant chain).
Not that I’m a regular at Sbarro’s but I noticed they’d put up new artwork (if you could call it that), specifically pictures of (presumably) Momma Sbarro at the counter of the original Sbarro’s somewhere in the deep dark past of restaurant marketing lore.
Now I have no way of knowing if there was or wasn’t a Momma Sbarro at the counter of the original Sbarro’s in Rome in the 1940s. The corporate web site says the first store opened in 1977.
Creating a mythical past seems to be the thing to do for restaurant marketing. Seth Godin cites the example of Red Lobster saying they’re from Maine when they don’t even have a restaurant there. I know of one restaurant around here that refuses to admit they are part of a chain.
Sounds all nice, like Captain Scrappy is hauling in the catch of the day fresh for the Bar Harbor store. But does anyone really care when all they want is shopping mall pizza or a cheap and halfway decent seafood meal? In the end I suppose there’s a world of difference between clever and stupid, or between telling a good story and spinning marketing bullshit.
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