As we talked about in a recent Schaeffer's Stock Market Podcast, restaurant stocks have been extremely strong this year, with names like Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD), and Chipotle (CMG) hitting fresh highs. But as many media profiles have noted in recent months, one of America's fastest growing restaurant chains (subscription required) isn't even on the public markets, that being chicken sandwich specialist Chick-Fil-A.
The privately owned company is in focus after announcing it's giving free food to anyone dressed like a cow today. The move is trying to build off the #CowAppreciationDay hashtag on social media sites like Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook-owned Instagram. Apparently this is the company's 15th annual Cow Appreciation Day, which it said brought in nearly 2 million cow-dressed customers in 2018.
Sure enough, #CowAppreciationDay was trending on Twitter at the time of this writing. Depending on how this plays out, we could see more companies try to leverage social media with similar promotions going forward -- and if so, hopefully they go better than Build-A-Bear's (BBW) "Pay Your Age" idea. We'll definitely be checking in on this hard-hitting story throughout the day, potentially even searching for my cow costume from two Halloweens ago.