A team member from one of Chipotle’s partner agencies was at a Charli XCX concert in New York on a Friday evening when a notification popped on screen that made her drop everything. It wasn’t an email from her boss, but a message from BeReal.

The social media app, which asks users to post images at a random time of the day, did just that—but from Chipotle’s account. With only two minutes (the amount of time BeReal gives everyone to post post-prompt) and no Chipotle location in sight, she snapped a pic of a company promo code on her friend’s phone.

For real: And so it goes on BeReal, dubbed “Gen Z’s new favorite platform.” Downloads have exploded this year—with 7.5+ million through 2022 so far, according to TechCrunch, making up almost 75% of the app’s total downloads period. (It was founded in 2019.)

As its name suggests, BeReal essentially promotes a “be yourself” mantra and filter-free reality. So what’s a company doing on there?

Well, in Chipotle’s case, Gen Z and millennials make up half of its consumer base, so the chain figured it would give the app a try. Chipotle’s first campaign focused on boosting its profile: It posted a reusable promo code where the first 100 people who used it would get a free entrée.

“The response was incredible the first day,” Candice Beck, Chipotle’s director of social and influencer, told Retail Brew. “All of our codes were gone in about 30 minutes, because it was new. And we’re still gaining followers. We just told people, and then every day after that, it was under a minute.”

• The company now has 2,000 “friends” (BeReal terminology) on the platform. But, put in perspective, Chipotle has 1.7+ million followers on TikTok, where it says it sees the highest engagement.

Beck admitted that the random nature of BeReal makes it difficult to plan for the platform. Still, Katherine Black, partner in the consumer practice at Kearney, said that Chipotle’s promo code campaign is a “smart way to test” the app.

“They’re putting something out there [that] they can directly measure,” Black said, and “see how quickly consumers take advantage of it.”

Testing, testing: Chipotle is still experimenting, Beck explained, focusing on brainstorming ideas that align with BeReal’s ethos of transparency. “Do we feature restaurant crew members?” she noted. “Or what’s the next phase that’s exciting for our followers and gives people a look behind the curtain?”

Click here to read more.—JS

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Alyssa Carroll is a longtime communications and brand strategist who’s had her own firm since 2017, with clients including Dollar Shave Club and Samsung’s SmartThings. But now, along with helping other brands, she’s decided to take a swing herself—in every sense.

Carroll is the founder of Disco Country Club, a Los Angeles-based brand of pickleball products that went live this month. Her “aha” moment came during the pandemic when Carroll, who’d been playing tennis for years, tried to get less-experienced friends to hit the courts with her, but they found the tennis learning curve to be a bit steep. Enter pickleball, which friends found much easier to pick up, but which, from a design standpoint, she found uninspiring.

“I repeatedly saw a sea of plain black pickleball paddles that were really lacking the level of aesthetics and design that tennis enjoys and saw an opportunity,” Carroll told us. And it’s not just a new business that Carroll is nurturing—she also has a newborn daughter who’s just seven weeks old.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I sell ’70s-inspired recreation products like pickleball paddles to people who love leisure. We focus on products at the intersection of games and sports to help make social play fun and free from the prerequisites of lessons and athletic endurance so that people can enjoy playing immediately.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile: I launched the company a month into maternity leave.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Creating our brand identity. Tennis has a very recognizable prep aesthetic, but pickleball is less defined which is a fun challenge. We like to think we’re the Dolly Parton to tennis’s Jackie O.

What’s the worst piece of business advice you’ve received? “You already have a great job, why try to start something new?” was something I heard a lot and could have led to a lot of professional limitation and regret if I had listened and decided not to dive headfirst into starting this business.

What’s the most embarrassing product in your order history from Amazon that you’re actually willing to admit? I’m a new mom, and there’s maybe too many baby hats with animal ears in my history (if you can actually have too many of those).

In case you haven’t set up a countdown clock for The SKU: Retail Brew Summit 2022, we’re here to remind you that we’re exactly five months out! And boy, are we getting excited.

On October 25 in NYC, we’ll be hearing from the president and COO of Athletic Greens, chief growth officer at Harry’s Inc., head of sustainability at Kroger, and director of brand experience at Zappos, along with many other extremely rad humans. Early-bird pricing doesn’t last much longer—be sure to snag your spot while the iron’s hot. Click here to register.

Today’s top retail reads.

Virtual reality: DoorDash and Grubhub have established new guidelines for virtual restaurants, requiring food from ghost kitchens to be differentiated from the fare on brick-and-mortar menus on the platform. (Insider)

Day in the sun: Investment firm Blackstone is taking a page out of its Spanx playbook to grow sun-care brand Supergoop. (Fortune)

Sock hop: Americans have been upping their stock of socks over the last two years—so much so that they’ve dethroned t-shirts at the nation’s most-purchased clothing item. (Quartz)

Your future is social selling. Ambitious brands see the social-commerce wave on the rise. That’s why Flowspace and Digiday surveyed 100+ execs about their priorities and tactics for this exciting channel. Their new report, The State of Social Commerce, is a must-read. Get it here.*

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