Case Study: Sonny's BBQ achieves unified franchise communication and measurable engagement with ThoughtFarmer

ThoughtFarmer helped Sonny's BBQ share news, capture knowledge, and connect franchisees across locations

Sonny’s BBQ is a franchise-based barbecue chain headquartered in Maitland, Florida, with 90 locations across eight states. Faced with the typical franchise challenges—maintaining brand and vision consistency, poor distribution and tracking of news and announcements, no easy way to recognize employees, and a clunky previous intranet with weak search and reporting—head office needed a user-friendly platform to unify communication across franchisees.

They implemented ThoughtFarmer’s intranet, nicknamed “Smoke Signals,” with support from ThoughtFarmer’s Customer Success team. The platform provides Shout-out recognition, news posting with read-tracking, a centralized repository for recipes and policies, and improved search and org charts. As a result, employees feel more appreciated, leadership can confirm message reach and engagement, and franchisees have easier access to up-to-date brand standards—while Sonny’s continues to roll out more analytics and features.

Sonny's BBQ

Heather Kruskamp

Training Manager