In a stretch defined by tariff uncertainty, consumer pullback, and declining foot traffic across NYC — Two Boots didn't just survive. It accelerated. Here's the marketing system that made it happen.
In 1987, two indie filmmakers — Phil Hartman and Doris Kornish — opened a small Cajun-Italian restaurant at 37 Avenue A in Manhattan. The plan was to run it for six months, raise enough money to finish a film, and move on. The restaurant had other plans.
Named for the boot-shaped geographies of Italy and Louisiana, Two Boots fused New Haven-style cornmeal crust with Cajun ingredients like andouille sausage and crawfish. The pizzas were given names drawn from pop culture — Mr. Pink, Larry Tate, The Newman — and each location was dressed in murals, mosaics, and folk art commissioned from neighborhood artists.
"Our philosophy has been to open a place we'd want to go to. I want the restaurants to feel like they grow out of the sidewalk of the neighborhood."
— Phil Hartman, Co-FounderToday, the brand operates three Manhattan pizzerias — West Village, Upper East Side, and Upper West Side — plus locations in Park Slope, New Jersey, and Nashville.
The brand had the soul. What it needed was a system.
Primi Digital built a connected marketing engine — six inputs feeding a central system that drives measurable outcomes across every location.
When Primi Digital took over Two Boots' marketing in January 2025, the brand had strong name recognition and fiercely loyal customers — but its digital marketing infrastructure was underdeveloped.
Specific "before" state details needed from Two Boots / previous agency to make the left column more precise. Examples: What was the posting cadence before Primi? Was there any paid media running? Were reviews being responded to? What was the email strategy? Any specific pain points the Two Boots team can articulate?
The opportunity was clear: Two Boots had the product differentiation, the cultural credibility, and the multi-location footprint. It needed consistent execution, data discipline, and a marketing system that could scale across every location.
Primi Digital deployed a full-stack marketing system across Two Boots' three Manhattan locations starting January 2025. Every channel was connected to a single operating rhythm: a 6-week planning cycle that synchronized content, campaigns, and promotions across the brand.
Meta + Google campaigns across all locations
GBP optimization, keywords, citations
6-week coordinated planning cycle
Quality, consistency, fulfillment
Monitoring, response, generation
Creator partnerships + UGC content
Scroll down for detailed results from each pillar ↓
Primi launched location-level paid campaigns across Meta (delivery-focused) and Google (store visits) for all three Manhattan locations. The system was designed to scale spend with performance, adding locations incrementally as results proved out.
Meta location campaigns drove a CPA improvement from $10.66 to $9.18, while Google store-visit campaigns generated 5,590 conversions in January 2026 alone at sub-dollar cost per action. Google ad investment scaled roughly 3× by December 2025, and kept scaling efficiently from there: monthly impressions grew ~14× (112K → 1.6M+), clicks grew 4×, and tracked conversions grew 3× — peaking at 6,308 in a single month — while cost-per-click fell about 25%. (Meta drove awareness; these trackable gains are Google's.) Two Boots saw a 30:1 return on catering-focused ad spend during the campaign (Oct 2025–Jan 2026), across its NYC locations then operating.
When someone in the Upper East Side searches "vegan pizza near me" at 7pm on a Friday, the question isn't whether Two Boots has a great answer — it's whether Google knows they do. When Primi started, it didn't.
Primi took ownership of all six Google Business Profiles and rebuilt them from the ground up — optimized descriptions, fresh photography, weekly posts, and systematic citation building across directories. The goal was simple: make Two Boots the first thing people see when they're hungry and searching.
The results came fast. In a single month (January to February 2026), Two Boots went from zero tracked keywords ranking to 90 — with 59 of those landing in the top 3 positions. High-value terms like "plant based pizza" and "vegan slice" hit position #1. "Vegan pizza near me," a term searched 4,000 times a month, reached position #3. Jersey City alone picked up 26 new ranking keywords overnight. As of July 2026, Ahrefs shows 260 keywords ranking, with 150 in the top three positions.
But rankings are just visibility. The real measure is whether people act on what they see. In February 2026, Two Boots' GBP listings generated 4,360 direct actions across its three Manhattan Google Business Profile listings — 535 phone calls, 2,518 direction requests, and 1,307 website clicks. That's over 155 people a day taking action directly from a Google listing.
The direction request trend tells the story best. West Village direction requests climbed from 767 in July 2025 to 1,277 by March 2026 — up 67%. More people aren't just finding Two Boots — they're walking through the door.
Details needed from Primi internal: What does the 6-week planning cycle look like? How many posts per week per location? Content calendar structure. Approval workflow. How do campaigns sync with menu changes, seasonal promotions, or local events? Example of a planning cycle in action.
By establishing a predictable 6-week planning cycle, Primi eliminated the feast-or-famine content pattern that plagues multi-location restaurant brands. Every location receives a coordinated content plan covering social posts, email campaigns, paid ad creative, and GBP updates — with enough lead time for review and approval.
Details needed from Two Boots operations team: What operational improvements were made alongside marketing? Examples: order accuracy, kitchen speed, delivery packaging, staff training, customer service standards. How did marketing insights feed back into ops decisions? Any specific initiatives (e.g., delivery radius optimization, menu engineering, staffing adjustments)?
Marketing creates demand. Operations fulfills it. Primi worked alongside the Two Boots operations team to ensure that increased traffic from paid media and local SEO was met with a consistent, high-quality customer experience across all locations.
Primi implemented a systematic review management program across all Two Boots locations — monitoring Google, Yelp, and TripAdvisor; responding to reviews; and proactively encouraging satisfied customers to share their experience.
| Location | Reviews | Rating | vs. Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Village | 911 | 4.5 ★ | Above Typical |
| Upper West Side | 378 | 4.5 ★ | Entry+ |
| Upper East Side | 364 | 4.6 ★ | Entry+ |
All three Manhattan locations already meet or exceed the industry benchmark median rating of 4.5★ for pizza restaurants. West Village exceeds the "Typical" review count of 498 for metro pizza restaurants; Upper East Side and Upper West Side are still building toward that benchmark. UWS generated 30 new reviews in February alone, up 88% from January.
Additional detail that would strengthen this section: Average response time to reviews. Example of a well-handled negative review. Any QR code table tent or post-visit email review solicitation programs? Before/after comparison of review volume when Primi started vs. now.
In a city where food content drives discovery, Primi built a targeted influencer program connecting Two Boots with NYC food creators across Instagram and TikTok — generating authentic content that reached new audiences beyond paid media.
The standout partnership: @storytime_nyc (80.6K followers), whose single sponsored post in July 2025 reached 117,802 views. Two Boots' own account had its best individual post of the year around the same push — a November 2, 2025 post that hit 102,710 views.
Q1 2026 was brutal for New York restaurants. Tariff-driven cost increases, consumer confidence at multi-year lows, and foot traffic declining across Manhattan. Industry-wide, restaurants were pulling back — cutting hours, shrinking menus, closing locations.
Two Boots grew 12.4%.
This wasn't luck. It was the result of a marketing system built over 12 months that compounds — paid media algorithms trained on real conversion data, SEO rankings climbing, a review engine generating social proof, and a content cadence that kept Two Boots visible when competitors went quiet.
When the economy tightens, brands without systems cut marketing. Brands with systems gain market share. Q1 2026 is the proof.
— The Primi Digital ThesisThe first quarter wasn't a one-off. Through the first half of 2026 (January 1–June 23), Two Boots' same-store net sales grew +14.6% year-over-year — a stronger rate, sustained over a longer window. And it wasn't just higher prices: guest counts rose too, so more people came and each spent more.
Same-store compares the three Manhattan locations open across both periods — West Village, Upper East Side, and Upper West Side. Both years measured over the same 174 days (January 1–June 23, 2025 vs. 2026).
The Q1 acceleration was built on a strong 2025. Primi's first full year managing Two Boots' marketing delivered a 7.1% increase in total revenue across its three Manhattan locations, compared to 2024.
Growth was strongest where the system had the most room to work. The Upper East Side and Upper West Side — Two Boots' newer locations — saw the most dramatic improvement.
| Location | YoY Growth (2024→2025) |
|---|---|
| West Village | +2.8% |
| Upper East Side | +9.6% |
| Upper West Side | +10.0% |
| Total (3 Manhattan) | +7.1% |
The UES delivered +28.8% YoY growth in November 2025 — the single strongest month of improvement across the three Manhattan locations. UWS sustained double-digit YoY growth in 6 of 12 months.
Year 1 built the foundation. Year 2 proved the thesis: when the economy contracts, a disciplined marketing system doesn't just protect — it accelerates.
Beyond paid media and sales, Primi built Two Boots' owned audience — the channels that drive repeat visits and lifetime value.
Instagram grew partly thanks to a strong influencer campaign. Content views surged from 1.19M in October to 2.16M in December 2025 — a +81% increase in two months. Two Boots' own organic account interactions jumped roughly 10× in a single month — from 736 in October to 7,128 in November 2025 (Meta API-verified) — during the same push, while total influencer-content interactions reached 15,000 by December.
This isn't vanity. The social surge directly coincided with one of Two Boots' strongest revenue stretches of the year — October was the strongest month of 2025 across the three Manhattan locations, with November, May, and December close behind. Social reach creates awareness, awareness drives first visits, and first visits convert to repeat customers through the email list of 53,000+ active subscribers. Each channel feeds the next.
Additional social detail needed: What content drove the Dec spike? Was it a specific campaign, reel, or viral moment? Instagram vs. TikTok breakdown. Follower count when Primi took over vs. current. Best-performing post examples with screenshots.
Two Boots isn't just another pizza brand. It's a 37-year-old cultural institution with a proven multi-city model, a differentiated product, and — as of 2025 — a marketing system that scales.
Cornmeal crust. Cajun-Italian fusion. Pop-culture naming. Neighborhood-specific art. Two Boots occupies a category of one — a premium, character-driven pizza experience that generates deep loyalty. The vegan lineup positions the brand ahead of the industry's fastest-growing dietary segment.
The three Manhattan locations delivered a 7.1% year-over-year revenue increase in 2025 — led by the Upper West Side and Upper East Side, up 10.0% and 9.6% respectively.
The out-of-market proof: Nashville — Two Boots' only location outside the NYC metro — is the second-highest revenue location in the entire portfolio. That's not an NYC anomaly. It's a model that travels.
Unit economics detail needed from Two Boots: Average build-out cost per location. Target store-level margin. Break-even timeline. Franchise fee structure. Royalty rates. Nashville P&L as an out-of-market proof point.
Unlike most franchise concepts where franchisees figure out marketing on their own, Two Boots offers a built-in digital marketing system managed by Primi Digital. Every new location gets immediate access to location-specific paid media at proven CPAs, optimized GBP listings, a 6-week content planning cycle, systematic review management, and monthly performance dashboards.
This isn't a brand book and a handshake. It's a living, data-driven marketing operation that starts generating results immediately.
Two Boots has supported 30+ arts organizations, countless schools, and social service agencies since 1987. Every location is designed to feel like it belongs to its neighborhood. This creates grassroots loyalty that no ad budget can buy.
In an economy where most restaurant brands are contracting, Two Boots is growing — with a proven marketing system that accelerates through downturns. If you're interested in bringing NYC's most iconic Cajun-Italian pizza to your city, we'd love to hear from you.
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