Welcome to The Restaurant Power List for September! This is my list of the Power accounts on Twitter for the restaurant/fast food/dining space. The Power List will be updated once a month.
Sponsorship options are now available for The Restaurant Power List! If you want to sponsor this month’s list, click here for prices and info on sponsorship levels.
If you want to be eligible for The Power List, do this:
1 – Follow me on Twitter. Make sure you have your position and the technology company you work for listed in your profile.
2 – If you want to nominate someone else to be on the Power List, tweet me their username on Twitter and I will be happy to check them out.
Here’s where you can find all the candidates for The Restaurant Power List. If you’re on that list, you are eligible for the Power List.
The Power List will rank the Top 10 Power users on Twitter. That number may expand past a Top 10 as the candidate pool becomes larger. In fact I hope it does.
How is the Power List ranked? How do I get to be #1?
I’ve been working with corporate teams to help them leverage Twitter as a communications tool for about 15 years now. So a lot of the Power List rankings is simply based on my experience working with people in a corporate setting and understanding what works and what doesn’t.
In short, there are two main consideration buckets I have when I rank the Power List:
1 – Posting frequency. I need to see enough content on your Twitter feed to see that you are making an effort to use Twitter to communicate with others. You don’t have to tweet every day, but if your last tweet is from December of 2022, you won’t be on the Power List.
2 – Original content. What I mean by that is I want to see content that’s written in your own unique voice. I get that working in a corporate environment comes with certain ‘challenges’ in regards to the tone and voice of your content. But that doesn’t mean that you should simply use your Twitter feed to repost your company’s press releases. Go behind the scenes, give us a sense of what your daily work day is like. One of the thoughts I should have when reading your Twitter feed is ‘Wow, that looks like a cool job, I wouldn’t mind working there!’
Before I get to the first Power List for the Restaurant industry, I wanted to share some general takeaways on what I learned from spending a LOT of time the past few weeks looking at Twitter profiles in the space:
1 – I mentioned above that one of the main criteria I look at when ranking profiles for The Power List is I want to see is ‘original’ content. What I mean by that is I want to see your unique perspective on the work you do. I think this is some of the most engaging and compelling content that someone working in a corporate environment can create. Up until this list, I really struggled to find candidates for the Power List that did a great job of creating content that communicates to me that they love their jobs. But the top 2 profiles on The Restaurant Power List knocked that ball out of the park.
2 – It was rough finding solid candidates for this Power List. Almost as brutal as it was for the Retail Power List. It’s not that good candidates aren’t out there, it’s just that a lot of them have left Twitter for LinkedIn. Same thing I saw in the Technology industry. So far, the Tourism space is the only industry of the four Power Lists where most of the candidates are as active on Twitter as they are on LinkedIn.
3 – I think there is a ton of potential for workers in the Restaurant industry to have fun with their social media accounts. The top accounts on the Power List are tapping into that potential and it’s clear they are having a blast with their jobs. That reflects positively on them AND the brands they work for. The sooner brands in ALL industries understand this, the sooner they can begin to leverage the content that their workers create on social as a recruiting tool. Because that’s what it becomes. Simply reading the tweets from the members of The Restaurant Power List, I now have a slightly better opinion of McDonald’s and Aunty Anne’s as a result.
The Restaurant Power List for September:
1 – Guillaume Huin, Head of Social Media @ McDonald’s, Power List Score – 93. Guillaume’s profile is a near perfect fusion of company and ‘original’ content. Most of his content is focused on his employer, McDonalds, but none of it feels like I’m reading a press release. Anything but! He makes his work seem fun, and that makes the McDonalds brand more relatable and likeable. If you are working in a corporate environment and want to learn how to create content about your employer and work that is ALSO interesting, study Guillaume’s content, because he’s giving you the blueprint. Well done, indeed (round of applause from the crowd).
2 – Bari Tippett, Social Media @ Auntie Anne’s, Power List Score – 90. You just have to enjoy reading Bari’s tweets. She leans more on the personal side than professional in her tweets, but her takes are always interesting. Like Guillaume, she makes her employer Auntie Anne seem like a fun brand to work for. She is great at building her personal brand, and that reflects positively on her employer. More companies need to be willing to embrace employers who I great at building their personal brand, as Bari is. Another very solid entry in the Power List.
3 – Gregg Majewski, CEO of Craveworthy Brands, Power List Score – 86. I kept bumping Gregg’s profile higher up the Power List the more I reviewed it. On my first initial pass of the candidates, Gregg was around 5th or 6th place. But the more I reviewed his profile and compared him to others on the list, I had to keep moving him up. Now Bari and Guillaume are very comfortable sharing their own personal opinions on their work, and not all workers (or their employers) are as willing to do the same. I get that. For those workers, look at what Gregg does with his content. Almost all of his content is focused on his brands, but he typically includes enough of an individual take on the content to make it more interesting, He will usually share a ‘here’s why I think this is interesting’ take on any content he shares. Which is much appreciated, and this is a great example of how a CEO can create compelling content on Twitter.
4 – Carl Loredo, Global CMO @ Wendy’s, Power List Score – 85. Carl has a solid profile. Good frequency, almost all of his content is focused on his employer, which is what you would expect from a Global CMO. I would like to see more content related strictly to Wendy’s marketing efforts, Carl is in a unique position where he could speak to this area. I think more content that pulls back the curtain and gives us insights into Wendy’s campaign development would be gold, and could push his profile toward a Power List score of 90 or higher.
5 – Tariq Hassan, CMO @ McDonalds, Power List Score – 83. A very solid profile, Tariq allows his character and personality to flow in his tweets in a way that’s very rare for the C-Suite on Twitter. His posting frequency is a bit on the low side, otherwise his score would be about 5 points higher.
6 – Meredith Almond, Social @ Jimmy John’s, Power List Score – 80. I went back and forth on where to rank Meredith’s profile. She has really good frequency of content, yet 75% of that content is personal, with the rest being a mix of content about Jimmy John’s, and her thoughts on working in social media. Still, just 25% of her content being about her work means she’s posting more often about her work than some who are tweeting about their work 100% of the time. If that makes sense, and it probably doesn’t. I think if Meredith could give us a bit more content about the social campaigns that Jimmy John’s is executing, it would really lift her profile.
7 – Brett Hammit, Data Scientist @ Yum! Brands, Power List Score – 73. Of all the profiles on all 4 Power Lists, I may have struggled the most on where to rank Brett’s profile. First, his content frequency is adequate, although it’s much better than some of the participants on this and past Power Lists. It could definitely improve. But none of his content is directly focused on his employer. Normally, that would be an automatic dis qualifier. Yet the majority of his content IS focused on data and data science. Which is his field. So I think if Brett would increase his frequency of posting AND have that content be around ‘Here’s how we are using data science at Yum! Brands’, even at a 30,000 foot level, his profile would really take off.
8 – Ali Beemer, Communications Manager @ Darden Restaurants, Power List Score – 72. We see a big drop off in the number of tweets for the final 3 members of the Power List. Ali doesn’t tweet very often, if she could get in a habit in tweeting even every couple of weeks, with at least half focusing on her work at Darden, it would greatly increase her score.
9 – Helen Mackey, SVP Marketing, Darden Restaurants, Power List Score – 71. As with Ali, she needs to tweet more. Hope to see more content, and hopefully focused on her work in marketing at Darden.
10 – Clay Johnson CTDO – Yum! Brands, Power List Score – 70. Very low activity from Clay’s account. Just from reading his brief bio on Twitter you can see that he has a wealth of work and life history to pull from to create amazing content. I hope he can start to do just that, his score would really take off if he did.
So that’s it for the first Restaurant Power List! A fairly top-heavy group, but the ones at the top are pretty amazing. Please follow the people that made this list, you can click on their name and it will take you to their Twitter profile so you can follow them. If you would like to nominate yourself or a peer for inclusion in The Toursm Power List, please follow me on Twitter, and make sure you have your position and the company you work for clearly listed in your Twitter profile. That’s it! All candidates for the Power List are on this list.
Would you like to sponsor The Power List for Restaurants? Here’s information on available options as well as prices.
So now that we have our first batch of Power Lists done for the Technology, Retail, Tourism and Restaurant industries, let’s do an extra Top 5 of ALL the lists:
1 – Kathryn Shea Duncan – 94 (Tourism)
2 – Guillaume Huin – 93 (Restaurants)
3 – Leisha Elliott – 93 (Tourism)
4 – Lou Dubois – 92 (Retail)
5 – Jim Hagen – 91 (Tourism)
Well done by all! Please remember to follow all the members of each list and leave a comment if there’s someone in ALL of these four industries who I should be considering for The Power List.
