Listen to 680 WPTF tomorrow at 8:40 AM (or stream it here) as we discuss the facts about the swine flu.

In light of the news of an outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and California, please note the pork used in our restaurants does NOT come from either location. This has been deemed a serious situation and we wanted to make sure our customers were aware. 

Also, please note the following fact from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention:

Can people catch swine flu from eating pork?
No. Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. You can not get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is safe. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160°F kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at comments@scnbnc.com.

This week I had the opportunity to meet some of tomorrow’s leaders in the classroom. I first visited North Carolina State University’s College of Management.  The College of Management educates tomorrow’s leaders through the University’s active integration of teaching, research and engagement. I listened and gave feedback as a ”mock investor” to four investment plans presented by students in a New Venture Planning class. It was interesting to hear their ideas and how they plan on executing them.

Later in the day, I spoke to the Clayton High School’s DECA Club. DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) is an association of marketing students that encourages the development of business and leadership skills through academic conferences and competitions. I spoke to the club about my position as marketing director, the types of advertising in general and Smithfield’s Chicken ‘N Bar-B-Q ‘s marketing goals. The club recently had four students earn finalist awards at the NC Career Development Conference in Greensboro. This made them eligible to compete at the International DECA Conference next week in Anaheim, California. We will be rooting for them!

It was encouraging to see the entrepreneurial spirit flow in both groups of students. I stressed to each group it’s important to have the work ethic to go along with the entrepreneurial spirit.  We think the leaders (managers) in our stores are entrepreneurs because they create business by serving great food with great service in clean stores. They realize, however, their success correlates directly with the work they put in their stores. Our leaders understand the only thing that stands in the way of reaching their goals is the effort to reach them. They understand they will not be successful if they try to passively operate their stores. Their success is attributed to the hard work they put in to serve our customers.

We look forward to serving these future entrepreneurs in our stores and hope they will have an opportunity to reach their goals.

Richard Averitte-Marketing Director

Our Havelock location closed for remodeling April 12th.  We are excited the renovation and hope to be back open in early June. Until then, be sure to visit our other locations in the area!

Last week’s unfortunate Domino’s Pizza-Youtube incident was not only a black eye for Domino’s Pizza, but for social media in general. While Domino’s seemed to recover well by responding with their own social media campaign, it just goes to show the power social media wields. Ideally, Domino’s Pizza would have like to begun this campaign under different circumstances. We were fortunate enough to already boarded the social media train and thus it allowed us to connect with a customer who is a long way from home.

Jamie Franks is an Operations Specialist and Rescue Swimmer in the United States Navy. His unit is US Navy EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Mobile Unit Three, stationed out of San Diego. They are currently deployed to southern Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Jamie became a fan on our Facebook page and wrote on our wall that he grew up in Smithfield, North Carolina and “eating at Smithfield’s Chicken ‘N BBQ is always a MANDATORY event when I’m at home on leave!”. 
    

  We deeply appreciate Jamie and his unit serving our country and realize their work sometimes goes unnoticed, if not forgotten.  We wrote him back and let him know we are sending his entire unit a package filled with t-shirts and hushpuppy mix.  We both agreed shipping Bar-B-Q to Afghanistan would not work, but we thought the cooks could use the mix and make hushpuppies (“I bet there’s a few guys here that don’t even know what hushpuppies are! We’ll have to educate them,” Jamie noted).

 Jamie remarked that “stuff from home is always a welcome sight over here and about the best thing we have while we are out here”.  If that’s the case, than our social media efforts have done more than we could have every imagined. We look forward to posting the pictures Jamie plans on sending.  We also look forward to one day (hopefully soon) serving Jamie in our Smithfield store.

Don’t worry soldier, it’ll be on us.

Congratulations to the Rocky Mount store as they were crowned champion of the Dessert Challenge! The Triangle stores were paired up against one another and placed in a tournament bracket a month ago.  The store with the higher percentage of dessert sales  moved to the next round. This was continued each week until it came down to one store.  The Rocky Mount team will be rewarded with a number of goodies and the Dessert Challenge trophy.  The trophy will remain in their store until next year, when a new Dessert Challenge Champion will be crowned (the Rocky Mount team insists the trophy will remain there ANOTHER year, though).

 Thank you to all who submitted entries into the various contests over the past few weeks!

Vandora Springs Elementary raised almost $3,000 at their Chairs Of Hope project! All proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life. Well done! We look forward to being a part of this project again next year!