Applebee’s Wants to Be Your Hip Hangout

Applebee’s newest commercials initially reminded me of a man in his 40s who still insists on wearing his letterman’s jacket as a pitiful, latent grasp at being cool. Mood lighting, close-up shots on nachos and foaming beers, and a throbbing bass line lead into the phrase: If you leave before 10, you’re doing it wrong.

This isn’t the first time that the chain has tried to stress the “bar” in “bar and grill.” In August 2012, after a few years of trial runs at individual restaurants, Applebee’s rolled out its new late-night club concept called the ‘Bee’s’; thus, assuming a sort of dual identity—cheesy-bread-pizza kid meals by day, strobe lights and endless Summer Squeezes by night.

Becky Johnson, a former senior vice president of marketing at Applebee’s, described their motivation in a 2012 interview with Bloomberg Business: “Remember when McDonald’s used to be called Mickey D’s? That was a street slang term, people playing with the name. We found out that ‘the Bee’s’ is how the kids are describing Applebee’s. The bee’s is an overt invitation to them. We want them back.”

According to a recent demographic profile of the chain, “Applebee’s average target consists of a core market including people between the ages of 35-54 years old.” The Bee’s concept—and the current TV marketing campaign—is meant to boost patronage from customers in their 20s to mid-30s. This brings up a series of questions: is it actually possible for a chain restaurant like this to simultaneously shift its image towards being the hip place to be from ten p.m. until two a.m., while still maintaining its family aesthetic the rest of the day? Will it actually work? And—this one is key—what does the Bee’s “done right” (i.e., going past 10 p.m.) look like?

So—with the editorial admonition to avoid OD-ing on riblets—I investigated.

Dr. Robin DiPietro is a professor at the University of South Carolina with 20 years of restaurant industry experience; her research interests lie in multi-unit restaurant management and operations, as well as human resource management.

DiPietro says that the primary reason that a brand decides to focus on a new demographic is so that they can add incremental revenue by trying to cater to a wider range of people. Lately, the typical casual dining chain customer base has been couples and families, but as the economy has started to get stronger they are trying to attract a wider range of people and fill their seats during a wider range of hours. Most families dine between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., and by trying to increase their late-night business they can add more revenue without taking away from the family or couple dining hours. She also says that, in theory, it is possible for Applebee’s to straddle both markets.

“As long as they don’t create an environment like they had in the 1980s when the casual dining chains became big—they were kind of a dating place where single friends went out and hooked up,” DiPietro said. “It appears that they are trying to cater to the late night crowd after 10pm when kids are home and in bed anyways.”

She continues: “As long as they have some good advertising and deals for younger people and implement some social media advertising, they should start getting some people in to try their specials.”

DiPietro said that the easiest way to measure the success of the late night targeting at Applebee’s will be to look at sales and sales increases year over year. “The other way to gauge interest would be to do some focus groups with the target market and determine what would get them to leave the traditional ‘bar’ scene and go to an Applebee’s instead,” she said.

Naturally, after my discussion with Dr. DiPietro, I organized a focus of my own (and by “focus group” I mean a group Facebook message with some of my closest friends.) I asked: “What would convince you to abandon the traditional bar scene and start going to Applebee’s to party? What would they need to do to get you as a customer?” Portions of the answers varied:

I would be intrigued by live music, good drink specials. [But] it weirds me out that they still have the booths and everything at late night. Doesn’t transition well into the bar atmosphere

I don’t do the “traditional bar scene” or Applebee’s, for that matter. Too noisy, too boring, respectively. They need to improve their their beer selection, for one, and their unimaginative, gimmicky cocktails.

For me it all comes down to the food— but I’m not sure I’d want to check in on any social media at Applebee’s.

Pinging over to Applebees.com, I sought any information to further entice them to make the switch. A banner promising 10 new appetizers (‘sharables, pub plates and bar snacks,’ rather) caught my attention, and I have to say, looked rather promising: sweet potato fries and dips, kobe-style meatballs, grilled chicken wonton tacos, churro s’mores— a sort of diminutive version of The Cheesecake Factory’s much-loved, though directionally confused, guilty-pleasure menu. These could be matched up in a variety of sampler platters; though be warned, “maximum 5 plates per sampler order.”

Flickr/Krista

There was no implicit promise of the nightlife as portrayed on their recent commercials. The most lively feature on their website was actually their linked Instagram feed where their social media marketing team has obviously made it their mission to become that friend who uses hashtags like #apps and is always saying things like Oh, come on, one bite won’t kill you as cheese sauce trickles down their chin. Speaking of, customers can now become a “fantographer” for the Bee’s by posting photos of their food. If the Chain Restaurant Gods—who are also in charge of whether or not your server will give you that desperately needed sixth plate for your sampler order—are smiling on them that day, their photo can be shared by the Applebee’s account.

If I was truly going to convince anyone—including myself—that the Bee’s was really going to take a place in the local bar scene, it was going to require a test-run.

On the drive over I thought back to that Bloomberg Business piece. According to the article, Central Florida is apparently the nexus of the Bee’s concept. Florida franchisee Neighborhood Restaurant Partners owns 51 Applebee’s from Tampa to Orlando and promotes many of them as faux dance halls called Club Applebee’s. After 10 p.m. they offer ’80s- and ’90s-themed dance parties, karaoke, “Girls’ Night Out,” and a monthly black-light party during which the servers wear white and cover the restaurant’s walls with white cloth. According to another Business Insider article, some independently franchised Applebee’s across the country have “gone rogue”— turning into “alcohol-fueled party dens after 10” and hosting events that do not align with the brand’s values (think overblown frat party-style antics). Regardless of the level of debauchery, DJ Christian Davis, who works at several Applebee’s in the Florida area, was quoted in the first article as saying: “Applebee’s is a weird party to work.”

My local Applebee’s—tucked in the midst of suburbia between a Target, a Salsarita’s and a furniture store—advertises none of these things. However, they do have Yelp reviews like, “My wife had a ladybug in her salad! All they did was replace the salad…not even an offer for a free appetizer or dessert. That’s just terrible business!” and “Happy hour?!? More like sad 20 minutes.. This place has a 2 drink maximum. During happy hour on a Sunday afternoon I was cut off after 2 drinks. They were my first 2 drinks of the day. Had I drank enough to actually be cut off I would have given these stingy bartenders a piece of my mind. The only cocktail I’d enjoy at this place from now on would be a molotov cocktail, right thru the window.”

Needless to say, my hopes were high for the night.

I, along with my brother (who in his short time on this earth has endured far more “test runs” in the name of journalism than any human should) arrived at 10:30. The bar was surprisingly full, so we found a booth close by. Our waiter, Todd—who looked vaguely like Chris Kirkpatrick from N*SYNC with a Celtic sleeve tattoo—slid drink napkins onto the table that read “Does this napkin make my glass look big?” before letting us “peruse the appetizers.”

Overall, it looked like an average Applebee’s. There was no dancing to speak of, except for a woman trying out different jerky arm and body movements from the safety of her booth to Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.” We ordered the kobe meatballs, chicken wonton tacos and wings to split, and they were what you would expect: not fantastic, but not awful either. I passed on the Bahama Breeze.

I was disappointed that there was no crazy hoard of suburbanites partying down on on the nubby green carpet, ducking around stained glass light covers. However, there was a man in his 70s on his third Sam Adams who complimented a young woman on her neon palazzo pants. As she proceeded to twirl and model them, the man’s wife came from the bathroom and grabbed his arm disapprovingly. There was a group of teenagers analyzing an Instagram post in the booth behind us. There were also two men sitting at opposite ends of the bar—one talking about looking for construction work, the other aggressively bobbing his bleached-blonde hair to “Billie Jean.”

And here’s the thing—they all seemed to be having a decent time, not wholly unlike the “neighborhood bar” vibe their marketing team is seeking, though perhaps just not as boisterous as their current commercials would lead one to believe.

When looking at photos of the chain, it seems that there is the potential for Applebee’s to make it as a party spot for the younger demographic they are targeting. In Austin, metal bands play at an Applebee’s location (and in Phoenix a metal band raised money for their tour by doing a carwash in the Bee’s parking lot). There are black light parties in Orlando, and in Tampa people allegedly got creative with whipped cream while dancing around on the faux-wooden bartop.

How can there be such uneven presentation of nightlife during the Bee’s big national push? It would seem that it all comes down to location, location, location — an urban or college-town rager versus suburban two-drink maximum. Building from that idea, perhaps doing Applebee’s right, like partying hard, is relative and looks different to different people.

That being said, was my experience enough to entice me to give up my local haunts? Probably not. But who know—it may be enough to entice others from my demographic group to accept the “overt invitation” extended by Johnson in 2012 to do the Bee’s right. As DiPietro said, only time—and sales reports—will tell.

Ashlie Stevens is a freelance writer living in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has been featured at The Guardian US, Louisville Magazine, STORY Magazine and STIR Journal. She spends her spare time chasing food trucks. This fall, she will begin her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Kentucky.