Toronto has experienced the longest pandemic lockdown of any city in the world. As of writing this, its ban on indoor dining is at day 314. As a result, every restaurant is struggling, with overall category sales being down 16% and a recent survey even showing that over 50% of owners believed they would go out of business by fall. With that, Good Fortune’s objective was to find a unique way to promote their restaurant, drive delivery sales and, simply put, stay alive. This all became even more challenging as every restaurant in the city flooded the mobile ordering apps. In short, they needed to stand out in the delivery space… with a $0 budget.

Our insight was that for the first time ever, millions of people around the globe were WFH. Record numbers of people were making home offices and expensing items to work. We also identified that mobile ordering apps had become part of our daily lives more than ever and that every restaurant was using this technology the exact same way (as it was designed). All this led us to Receats, a sneaky way to expense your eats by implementing the simplest mobile app hack. We renamed Good Fortune’s entire menu on Uber Eats and DoorDash as office supplies, giving people the option to expense food to work. An additional element of the idea was the fun/cheeky/potentially unethical aspect of it. We knew that if the idea could spark some form of debate (“this is awesome” vs. “this is illegal”), we could amplify our message and (non-existent) budget across social media.

Food ordering apps had become the most important ecommerce platforms within our new business model. They were the main space we were able to get in front of potential customers, and we needed to find a way to stand out. Our competitors were all using this technology in the exact same way: the way it was designed to be used. We needed an innovative idea to promote ourselves within these ecommerce platforms, and in a way that would resonate with people stuck at home. Our research showed that record numbers of our target audience was now working from home and creating home offices. Encouraging people to expense our disguised menu allowed us to achieve our final goal: to spark some (mostly fun) debate around the campaign. By building some tension and potential controversy into the idea, we were able to gain much more traction within social algorithms.

To bring Receats to life, we renamed every single item on Good Fortune’s menu as popular office supplies. These supplies were selected to be believable in both price and purpose; burgers became Basic Steel Staplers, chicken sandwiches became Dry Erase Whiteboards, the list went on. We then uploaded the menu to the most popular mobile delivery apps: Uber Eats and DoorDash. After disguising our food, we knew people’s expenses would require paper trails, so we rejigged the receipt printing process to provide customers with real receipts for their ‘office items’ that came from GF Office Supply Co., our fictional identity. Beyond sneakily changing the menus within the ordering apps, the only thing we did to promote the execution was share a few organic Instagram posts; introducing and explaining the idea to our existing followers.

Receats quickly blew up and had over 300 articles written about it in at least 16 countries, accounting for an estimated 570m+ media impressions. The campaign also stirred endless threads of love, laughs and ethical debates on various social platforms. It received over 150k upvotes on Reddit, rising to the top of the r/funny subreddit (the second most popular subreddit of all with over 34m subscribers). It trended on LinkedIn and would end up featured on LinkedIn News. It went wild on TikTok with individual posts earning over 30k likes and it exploded on Twitter, earning over $225,000 of free media on that one platform alone. It was even used as a business case at Canada’s top business school (Ivey). And, most importantly, this disruptive concept drove a 34% increase in sales for Good Fortune that not only allowed the restaurant to survive, but also to thrive.