The Food Scout

Just as I am a sucker for all-you-can-eat buffets, I can’t resist free food giveaways. I’m not talking about those club-store smorgasbords where people make a meal out of sampling little cups of cocktail weenies, energy bars, and processed cheese. I’m talking about

This isn’t a brand new trend, of course. Though I only discovered National (i.e., “free”) Donut Day by accident while on a business trip earlier this month, free donuts have been passed out the first Friday of June since 1938. In more recent years, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shops, which started a Free Cone Day on May 5, 1979 (according to Wikipedia), started giving a free scoop of any flavor of ice cream to people who visit a shop on that day, totalling about a million free samples per year(granted, B&J doesn’t have THAT many outlets).

Okay, well that’s nice and novel, but none of this set off my trend radar until recently, when it appears a lot more chains have figured out they can get free buzz over the airwaves and drive some traffic and trial of new food items. Within days of experiencing my first free donut, I learned that Sonic was giving away free root beer floats on June 7. (It happened my son had a baseball game that night, so I announced to all the Little Leagers at that game that if they showed up to Sonic after the game, the root beer floats were “on me.” I don’t think my Sonic was too happy to have me show up with 10 kids and a bunch of adults who were there just for free food). Sonic says it exceeded its 3-million-giveaway goal.

Then I learned just a few days later that the McDonald’s in our area were offering free Iced Coffees for a few Mondays in a row (McDonald’s did the same in the past year in markets where the “new” premium coffee was launched). What is going on here, I wondered? Even I was having trouble keeping up on all the free food being handed out. This was going to cost me a lot more trips to the YMCA than I had expected.

And sure enough, a couple days later, Ad Age published news of all the Fast Food Freebies being handed out lately. Starbucks has been doing it for awhile, of course. And Chipotle has a stealth campaign of giveaways corresponding with store openings since 1997. McDonald’s also premiered its (now de-listed) spicy chicken sandwiches about a year ago with the freebie tactic. In January, KFC handed out coupons for free Buffalo Snackers. And a day before free float day this month, Wendy’s launched a 6-month taste tour to give away free hamburgers in 25 cities around the country.

While sampling whole sandwiches is an expensive proposition, the benefit for the restaurant brand appears to be that “free” is better than “cheaper” when it comes to protecting price points. The problem with promotions is that once consumers get fixated on something costing 99 cents, it’s hard to sell that same item a month later at $1.59. In addition, it appears that when consumers stop by for a free coffee, float or sandwich, they are likely to also order something to go with it (Not me. That kills the whole idea of “free” if you spend any money on a giveaway occasion.), not to mention having a brand experience that may drive repeat sooner than it would have.

One-time giveaways are nice, but my calendar is programmed to alert me for those yearly deals. Only 347 more days until another free donut!