Call it brilliant marketing…or just the right thing do.
On the eve of what forecasters say could be a major ice storm, the owners of Sugarfire Smoke House announced one of their now-famous, bighearted giveaways.
Anytime during the next three days (January 13–15), Missouri Department of Transportation employees, as well as workers clearing local roads, can visit the six Sugarfire locations and receive a free MoDOT Meltdown sandwich (pictured above).
Readers and Sugarfire fans will recall that on October 1, 2013, the first day of the federal government furloughs, Sugarfire co-owner Mike Johnson offered a "Government Shutdown Sandwich" for $7, but charged only $3 to those who had been furloughed, no questions asked. The next day, he decided not to charge anything at all and continued to give them away (to the tune of 50 to 60 sandwiches per day) as long as those workers remained out of work. The gesture made national and international news. When one furloughed worker who was a vegetarian told Johnson that she admired the effort, he reacted by making a vegetarian version just for her.
In this SLM Q&A, he called the effort “an impulse reaction, a thank-you to the out-of-work customers who supported us during our first year. We lost money, sure, but I'd do it all again.”
And so he did.
This weekend's giveaway is on the honor system: Road crew workers are not required to fish IDs out of their Carhartts.
Snow removal workers taking a noontime break at Sugarfire's Valley Park location
Another noteworthy consideration: On a day when many restaurants have decided to close, Sugarfire’s restaurants will stay open “if at all possible,” Johnson says. Thousands of pounds of brisket, pork, and other meats barbecue were smoked last night, so it only made sense to do so. “We’re not forcing any of our employees to work today,” Johnson says, but he’d like to keep the restaurants open, even with limited crews.
A similar situation happened a few years ago, when a snowstorm prevented other restaurants from opening. That morning, Johnson announced via Facebook that Sugarfire was indeed open, showing a video of “donuts for breakfast” (see below) and rewarding the hearty with hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps. The ploy worked: Sugarfire’s skeleton crew did several thousand dollars worth of barbecue business in just a few hours.
Editor's note: And this add-on from their newly-opened sister restaurant: "Plus our friends at Hi Pointe Drive In have a FREE single burger for our hard working first responders." Read more about Hi-Pointe here.
