Two years ago

...we helped our friends (and the world) by creating a week of tomato and mayo glory called Hot Tomato Summer. If you haven't heard, it's a weeklong celebration of mayo and tomato dishes during peak tomato season. It's basically summer camp for local restaurants. This year, we doubled down on southern cities, adding Charleston and Charlotte to our roster of red and white, joining Richmond and Greenville.

The temperatures were high, and the expectations were even higher as we began teasing the week-long tomato and mayo extravaganza on radio, digital, and social. Tubby even made an appearance at The Flying Squirrels game in Richmond. Fans were starting to feel the excitement in their gut as restaurants in four cities began posting all of their own content and specialty menu items. Cue the nation's salivation.

Venmayo: Putting Money Where the Mouths Are

To encourage engagement during mealtime, we devised a brilliant idea: Let Duke's pay the tab. Whenever Tomato and Mayo lovers posted their lunch pic to socials, the Duke's team would reach out to winners in each market with some cash—a small price to pay for some authentic fandom.

The Golden Tomato Award

There are many awards in the gastronomical world. There's the Michelin Star, the James Beard Award, etc. But we saw a need for an award that captures fandom for local restaurants. Enter the Golden Tomato Award. We asked mayo and tomato fans to vote for their favorite participating restaurant in their respective cities, and the response blew us away. With over 31,000 votes, we saw one of the biggest swells of engagement, including restaurants posting content galore to earn the votes of their mayo and tomato eaters.

Oh, and we gave out these mayonificent trophies to four incredible restaurants.

Super Delicious and Effective

It's rare that you can go out and taste the results of a campaign. With hundreds of specialty menu items created by 176 restaurants, we Creatures were delighted to get our fill with the rest of the mayo and tomato fanatics.

Fueled by people searching for custom merch, sales on dukesmayo.com soared—increasing 246%.

Here are some more stats for you stat lovers: