What do you get when you fuse the tastiness of Korean BBQ and the portability of tacos? Some LA entrepreneurs think its the answer to late night hunger and decided to call it Kogi.

While your first guess might be that it’s some quick-serve joint, what makes Kogi special is that its luxurious dining room is whatever curbside its mobile restaurant (no, nothing to do with cell phones) is parked at. Kogi’s big white vans hide a full kitchen within and ride around like an ice-cream truck, satisfying the hunger needs of night owls and party-goers.

Although the idea of Korean-Mexican fusion cuisine and a certain feeling of nostalgia of my all-too-brief trip to Seoul stir up the want to try one of their Kimchi Quesadillas, I mention Kogi for a totally different reason. Recently, Kogi received some press (CNN, Current TV) due to its use of Twitter as a marketing medium.

A few years ago, every business had to get a website (well maybe a little more than a few). Now, the big trend for businesses is to tweet. Finished are the days of full-blown blogging, micro-blogging through Twitter, is quick, concise and can reach your audience through multiple avenues. The problem is that, like blogging, many businesses start on these trends just because its the “thing to do”, but don’t ever develop a plan how to use them or, like in the case of Twitter, even understand what the medium is about.

The people behind Kogi, on the other hand, took a new medium and used it creatively. Kogi tweet the location of their taco trucks, an idea that sparked something of a little phenomenon where people, not familiar with the site, have joined Twitter through word-of-mouth to follow the mobile restaurateur.

While the hype and PR will inevitably die down and the Twitterers (Twitterees?) won’t be making a Kogi night an event, most will keep following because there’s nothing like a little alcohol to bring on the need for some late-night grilled meat and corn flour tortillas.

Also, check out Ben Hoffman’s comical report on the Asian taco peddlers from Current.

Tags: fast food, korean bbq, mobile, restaurant, twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.