Plus, Chick-fil-A is suing over chicken price-fixing, and more news to start your day
Wendy’s to entice customers with celebrity gamer meals and impossible-to-get console giveaways
Earlier this fall, rapper Travis Scott’s partnership with McDonald’s — which was so popular that employees were required to learn Travis Scott catchphrases, and ingredients for the limited-time meal started to run out at some locations — showcased the power of a smart celebrity endorsement in the age of social media. Now Wendy’s has cut its own deal with a new batch of stars, partnering with Uber Eats and five Fortnite streamers to sell branded meals and give away gaming prizes, including items that are so in demand they’re next to impossible to find in stores.
Between December 8 and December 12, customers who order a streamer’s branded meal will receive an Uber Eats Prize Pass with a code, which they can enter on a website to see if they’ve won anything, per CNN. Prizes include gaming merch, gift cards, and “the console no one can get,” referring to next-generation gaming consoles like the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, which are seemingly sold out everywhere.
While Wendy’s has dabbled in video game promotions before, last year releasing its own arcade-style games on Giphy, this latest partnership offers interesting insight into where youth culture has shifted (after all, where the young and the cool are, the brands follow). Popular musicians like Travis Scott have always made sense for partnerships, but streamers like Myth, Flight, ItsShafu, xChocoBars, and Tfue — who, between them, have tens of millions of followers on Twitch and social media — are less-explored territory, although Twitch boasts more than 26 million average daily visitors, according to its press pack. With streaming only becoming bigger, there will likely be even more celebrity gamers hawking fast-food meals in the future.
And in other news…
- The Cheesecake Factory has agreed to pay a penalty of $125,000 after the Securities and Exchange Commission found that the restaurant chain, which famously told landlords that it wouldn’t make April rent, misled investors about how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting its financial health. [WSJ]
- Chick-fil-A filed a lawsuit accusing Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, and other chicken suppliers of price-fixing poultry. [Bloomberg]
- After 26 years, Popeyes is leaving South Korea. [Korea Herald]
- Food delivery companies have benefited enormously from the pandemic (their gig workers, meanwhile, haven’t been so lucky). But what happens after the pandemic ends? [CNN]
- Jacques Pépin’s wife Gloria, to whom he had been married for five decades, died this weekend, the chef shared on social media. [People]
- A former poultry farmer on how the meatpacking industry failed workers during the pandemic. [Business Insider]
- A review of lab-grown chicken: “I would rather the many millions of dollars that are going into developing lab-grown meat went to helping farmers update and rethink their practices — to assist them with creating sustainable, regenerative models.” [The Guardian]
- The King’s Hand:
I had a dream where there was a food called “King’s Hand”, a hollow hand made of m&m cookie, filled with Greek salad.
— neo-cannolialist (@thatfrood) December 6, 2020
I could not stop thinking about it.
Here is the culmination of a week long effort. pic.twitter.com/tMVutcj9H8
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