Comments on: Email Marketing Disaster: Boloco Burritos in a PR Storm

By: John Pepper

John Pepper — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:31:09 +0000

Finally we got something right!
Thanks Paul 🙂

By: Jason Fox

Jason Fox — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 03:47:58 +0000

Great story. Honestly, I am shocked they tried it a second time. It is already a sensitive topic, they had experienced ill will previously. Leave it alone.

By: Patricia Dulaney

Patricia Dulaney — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:46:42 +0000

This is quite funny! Lesson learned.

By: John Pepper

John Pepper — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:44:03 +0000

In reply to Brent Carnduff.

Brent,
We’ll only send one to you 😉

By: Brent Carnduff

Brent Carnduff — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:55:25 +0000

Attention Boloco

Do NOT send out an email next time their is a storm expected! : )

By: John Pepper

John Pepper — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 02:38:57 +0000

In reply to Paul Shapiro.

Thanks Paul!
Send that Boloco card # to my attention at buzz @boloco dot com and we’ll make sure the next 2 summers are our treat 🙂

Cheers
John

By: Paul Shapiro

Paul Shapiro — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 01:06:48 +0000

In reply to John Pepper.

Thanks for the tweet and the clarification. Although I’m a New Yorker, I was introduced to your restaurant thought my girlfriend who lives in Boston. I know she frequents the chain often. We were both shocked that Boloco received such hate mail because we both considered the emails rather benign. They were honestly funny, which was probably what your were going for. I don’t know if I would have repeated the weather themed email the second time, considering the strong response some of your customers had to the first one.

I’m still a fan of your summer burrito.

-Paul

By: John Pepper

John Pepper — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 00:22:28 +0000

Thanks for including us in your post. We are often misunderstood. We understand the ire people felt, and apologized to those who felt that way. In all honesty, it’s incredible how many bars and fine dining restaurants (and even McDonald’s) stayed open and profited handsomely from doing so. We try to be very transparent with our guests, to a fault, because we want people to see the “real deal”. We don’t want to do generic emails or promotions. We like calling it like it is. We apologize to those who disagree, at times publicly, but we do a lot more thanking and appreciating to those who like the transparency. While not always successful, we go way above and beyond to positively impact the lives and futures of our people. Most of our people will vouch for it all day long, and communication about their options during all storms was crystal clear and re clarified over and over again.
I’m sorry we caused you to look at us as you describe. Hopefully in time we might earn your trust back.
Best
John Pepper
PS. I shared your post on twitter. It’s valuable for others to see. It’s part of our strategy of total transparency.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:35:23 +0000

I agree 100%. I am on this email list and received both of these emails as they were sent. Perhaps I am not as sensitive to workers’ rights, but I honestly didn’t worry about how the staff would get home (as long as the subways were working I thought it was fine). However, I saw all of these nasty comments, that Boloco emailed out to all of us, and I was colored by other people’s hatemail. I couldn’t believe they sent MORE quotes during this past blizzard!