Why Community Building is Critical: How One Viral Tweet Saved A Small Business

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Manny's Deli is a Chicago institution and a family-owned and operated restaurant serving Chicago since 1942. The iconic Chicago deli has a loyal following that has been developed over the years and in 2015 they decided social media was an important marketing strategy to connect and grow with their customer base. Also, to reach a younger demographic. That is when Fresh Content Society started to build and cultivate their communities. 

In 2020, the world unexpectedly was hit with COVID-19 and caused a global pandemic hurting many industries. With more people staying home and eating at home, the restaurant industry started to suffer. Manny's Deli is a volume-based restaurant with over 200 seats. During a normal workweek (prior to COVID) there was a line outside the door for lunch almost daily. Well, that came to a halt. 

As business slowed down tremendously, and the PPP loan ran out, Manny's Deli was getting ready to layoff some of their staff. We decided to take our reality public and share the current state of the business on social media. We decided to post a plea out on Twitter and Chicago showed up for Manny's Deli. After two hours of the tweet, there was a line wrapped around the building for over two weeks and the restaurant had a hard time keeping up with demand. The tweet generated over 5 million impressions, national news coverage, and most importantly it drove sales up 1,500%. 

After attending this session, attendees will have a better understanding of how important social media can be to a business and key tactics for building a robust social media community for a small business.