Ruby Tuesday’s Blowing Up

AdFreak posted about Ruby Tuesday’s idea to get rid of their old image by blowing up its last old-style restaurant live on their website Rubytuesday.com on Tuesday, Aug. 5th. This is the lead in to their “It’s a brand new Tuesday” campaign. Ruby Tuesday will introduce a new menu that switches from a “bar & grill” to “simple, fresh, American dining” menu.

According to Brandweek, Ron Paul, President of Technomic, Chicago, that tracks the restaurant industry says, “Ruby Tuesday is attempting to recover from a misguided foray into upscale dining. They took their eye off of their core customer and tried to go upscale… they didn’t attract enough new customers and turned off existing ones. They have been significantly damaged.” Brandweeks also mentions that Ruby Tuesday is planning to close nearly 15 stores next year and open about 20 new ones. The article mentioned Ruby Tuesday is “projecting for it’s 2009 fiscal year a decline of low to mid-single digits for the year with next quarter’s sales to be down 8-9%.”

I’m a fan of Ruby Tuesday ever since I worked there as a hostess while in college. I hope they’re able to rebound.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.