Urban Wren

A culinary experience like no other floors foodies from far and near.
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Urban Wren takes flight

Food + Beverage

More than just a restaurant, Urban Wren is a local eatery focused on building community and creating experiences. With a desire to serve born out of a love of food, wine and great service, Urban Wren is focused on bringing everyone to the table.

The Opportunity

Flourish was brought in at Urban Wren’s grand opening in the early spring of 2019, mere days before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a statewide lockdown. Initially, the largest challenge was gaining mass awareness for the restaurant while simultaneously adapting to the numerous changes in menu, methods of delivery, and opportunities for guests to experience Urban Wren in the middle of a global shutdown.

As a startup business there are hundreds of things to navigate, and flourish helped keep us on track with our growth strategy. Flourish preemptively prepared us for the year that 2020 became and spread the word about our growing business. We went from not being known to the community to winning two local awards and getting nominated in 9 categories after a month of being open. The team we work with every week at flourish is honest and genuine in guiding us to make the best decisions to bring our business to the next level.

Don and Nick Lincoln, Owners

Strategic Snapshot

The mission was clear: to gain as much market traction as possible, in an already-saturated market, in spite of the many challenges that presented due to the COVID-19 crisis. To begin with, flourish began to work with the local media, who were already concerned about and very willing to support the restaurants who were being affected by the pandemic, to gain earned media, then worked directly with Urban Wren leadership to showcase new menu items, specials, media opportunities, and awards. From that point, the team established a number of other avenues of marketing in order to solidify Urban Wren as a place for the community:

  • Developed and launched foundational branding tools to communicate the restaurant experience in more of an online storefront since the brick-and-mortar experience was unavailable for several months
  • Continually lent strategic counsel to Urban Wren’s ownership to navigate the pandemic in ways that were innovative and resourceful
  • Defined a social strategy that would make Urban Wren stand out amongst local restaurant competition.
  • Provided emerging platform and paid recommendations and support with on-site capture.
  • Provided 24/7 moderation for the account, extending the level of service one expects inside the restaurant to the social sphere.

Tactical Toolbox

In order to achieve these significant goals, flourish implemented a variety of marketing strategies to both grow awareness of the restaurant, and position it as a “must visit” for local Foodies:

  • creative services
  • website design
  • content marketing
  • social media management
  • public/media relations
  • strategic counsel
  • crisis communications

Results

As a result of an incredible amount of focus and hard work with the Urban Wren team, we were able to see significant results in a short amount of time.

  • The Urban Wren social media channels have remained a source of information and been able to promote new, innovative ideas with a relatively short turnaround, allowing the team to remain flexible and innovative.
  • The brand has earned significant media exposure in local publications featuring the restaurant, the menu and event space.
  • Urban Wren won Best of the Upstate awards in 2020 (their first year!) for Best New Restaurant and Best Wine Selection—two acknowledgments that helped solidify them as a “go to” location in the Upstate restaurant scene. In 2021, Urban Wren followed those up with four Best of the Upstate awards, for Best Chef, Best Wine Selection, Best Bar Staff and Best Sunday Brunch.