A club sandwich presents an awkward problem for a publicist. People already know what it is. They may even like it. But familiarity gives them very little to announce. Ajenda Public Relations found an answer in the word “club”: put lunch under nightclub lights.
For TOGO’S, the agency dressed up the California Club and Clubhouse Melt with a VIP theme, extending the idea across store displays and digital creative. Ajenda reports doubled sales for the featured sandwiches in the first week. Treat that as an agency-reported launch result. The more portable insight is the creative decision: an existing product supplied the premise for a new occasion.
A publicist who knew the dining room
Jennifer Morris started Ajenda in 2010. Her preparation came from restaurants: a 2024 Orange County Business Journal profile describes a founder who launched at 29 after more than a decade in the industry. The same account puts the agency at around 30 clients, spanning restaurant, hotel and food businesses.
That background offers a useful way to read the work. A restaurant has several audiences at once. The editor needs something publishable. The guest needs somewhere to eat. The operator needs enough people to choose that restaurant, preferably at a time when there is room to serve them. A campaign has to survive all three conversations.
Ajenda occupies the space where those conversations meet. Its published client roster ranges from The Halal Guys and Farmer Boys to Hilton Anaheim and Greenbar Distillery. That places it among specialist hospitality agencies serving both independent businesses and larger brands. A hotel chef, a franchise opening and a distillery will have different stories, even when they all need the same basic thing: a reason for someone else to pay attention.
The distinction from a generalist agency is its concentration on food and hospitality. Within that market, buyers can also consider specialists such as JS2 PR, a freelance publicist or their own internal team. Ajenda’s case for consideration lies in the combination of restaurant familiarity and hands-on creative work.
The offer does some of the talking
The Farmer Boys anniversary promotion took participation considerably further than choosing a sandwich. In April 2021, the chain announced free permanent tattoos for adult fans, with a year of burgers attached. There were three designs, each two inches square. The announcement named tattoo-shop partners in West Hollywood and Las Vegas. Temporary tattoos offered a less committed route into the celebration.
Morris’s Los Angeles Times profile credits Ajenda with the tattoo initiative. The premise practically contained its own headline. A burger disappears over lunch; a tattoo stays. That imbalance gives a reader something to discuss, including whether they would ever do it.
It also illustrates a practical limit. CNN reporting carried by KVIA noted the chain’s warning that heavy demand meant applicants were not guaranteed appointments. Attention and capacity travel at different speeds. For anyone borrowing the idea, appointment supply and participant expectations belong in the brief alongside the headline.
An occasionWhy this, why now?
A simple actionWhat can a guest do?
A story to retellWhy would a friend care?
A slow Monday is a usable brief
Ajenda’s older campaign accounts offer more modest versions of the same approach. For Cha Cha’s Latin Kitchen, National Margarita Day became a Monday promotion with $10 Grande Margaritas. For Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a grand-opening selfie earned a complimentary smoothie; Ajenda reports more than 24,300 social impressions that day. At Fly-N-Fish, a chowder fundraiser raised a reported $10,000 for St. Jude, with Santa Monica Seafood donating clams.
Those are three different jobs: improve a quiet trading period, introduce a location and support a cause. They deserve different measurements. Impressions describe exposure. Donations describe money raised. Neither number, by itself, tells an operator how many guests will return next month.
The copyable discipline is to make the brief specific before making it entertaining. Choose the occasion, define the guest’s action, and decide which result would justify repeating the event. A complimentary item has an ingredient and labor cost. A discount changes the economics of an order. Those considerations should shape the offer before the invitations go out.
The small work that holds an idea together
Ajenda’s service menu connects publicity with the materials surrounding a visit: media relations, grand openings, social management, newsletters, design, photography and short-form video. It also lists media kits, website design, direct mailers and advertising negotiations. The business model is a professional services agency: clients buy work performed by people, with the scope built around their communication needs.
For an operator, this breadth can reduce the handoffs between a promotion’s concept and execution. The window display, email and social post can carry a recognizable invitation. A food photograph can support several of those placements. The useful purchasing question is which pieces a particular restaurant needs, who will approve them and how they will reach the intended guest.
A 2019 Chapman University internship account supplies a view of that daily work. Jessica Tredota described creating and managing social content for Fly-N-Fish and Gulliver’s. The work required an understanding of nearby audiences. A national agency still has to earn its local vocabulary.
Another Chapman intern, Tiffany Cheng, described initially struggling to find the voice that suited Southern California restaurant customers. Agency fact sheets helped her adapt. This is a small, instructive account of friction: design skills did not automatically supply audience knowledge. Research made the creative work more useful.
The founder had to leave the phone alone
The agency’s internal story has its own practical turning point. In a 2017 Forbes article about disconnecting, Morris described working constantly after founding the business, then recognizing that she needed a mental break. She credited a mentor with a compact hiring rule.
“hire hard, manage easy”
Advice Jennifer Morris recalled from a mentor, Forbes, 2017
Morris connected time away with empowering employees to make decisions. She had managed to step back during a 10-day Italian holiday. For a business selling judgment and responsiveness, that is a meaningful management problem: if every choice waits for the founder, the founder becomes the queue.
During the pandemic, The Story Exchange described Morris organizing guest speakers and randomly assigned Thursday lunches for her eight employees at the time. The agency’s advertised Spring 2026 internship was fully remote, unpaid and offered college credit. These details make the culture more concrete than a claim that everyone is creative: learning and staying connected require arrangements on the calendar.
Give the guest something to do
Ajenda’s work suggests a useful starting point for a restaurant owner: bring a real operating problem to the conversation. An opening needs an audience. An overlooked item needs a reason to be reconsidered. A chef may have expertise that deserves a wider hearing. The sharper that problem, the easier it becomes to judge the proposed work.
There are conditions attached. A participation campaign needs an offer people actually want, staff able to deliver it and a message suited to the audience. Without those, the clever wording has little to hold it up. Before borrowing the stunt, borrow the discipline of connecting the invitation to the experience.
Look again at the club sandwich. The ingredients were already there. The interesting decision was to notice something in an ordinary lunch that somebody might enjoy repeating to a friend.