Evian and Stockholm Vodka Sign on For Interactive Dining Experience
A new restaurant concept, uWink, can only be described as Match.com meets reality TV.
uWink offers entertainment options (including games, movie trailers, horoscopes and other media) for its customers, allowing tables to participate together via touch screen terminals, engage other tables and eventually interact with guests and tables at other uWink restaurants. The first restaurant is set to open shortly at the Westfield Promenade in Woodland Hills, CA. Two to three more restaurants are expected to open in the next few months in southern California, uWink spokesperson Alissa Bushnell said.
Under the company’s marketing partnership program, Evian and Stockholm vodka have signed on as sponsors to use the touch screens as marketing mediums. Both brands can include product descriptions and logos on the screen, including messaging that lets customers know that their products can be purchased at the restaurant. In turn, uWink reports those sales back to Evian and Stockholm, Bushnell said.
“The opportunity to directly engage the customer during their decision-making process gives us an obvious advantage that easily translates into increased revenue,” said Erica Swenson, director of sales and marketing, Stockholm Krystal Vodka, in a statement. “That unique opportunity, combined with the ability to actually track and analyze customers, purchasing preferences so that we might modify our messaging to better attract future customers places uWink’s marketing program in a class of its own”
“uWink’s new marketing partner program provides Evian with customer information at the point of consumption, which has never been done before,” added Alexia de Luca, on premise manager for Evian North America, in a statement.
uWink, Inc. is a publicly-held digital entertainment company based in Los Angeles that develops interactive entertainment for restaurants, bars, and mobile devices.
“Through our unique blend of food, drink and digital media we are able to directly engage our customers in an unprecedented type of social entertainment experience”, said Nolan Bushnell, the CEO of uWink and the founder and former CEO of Atari, Inc., who is launching the chain of restaurants with the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain, now CEC Entertainment, Inc.
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