Nationwide Milestone: How Bubba Gump's 30th Became a National Moment

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. is the only restaurant chain ever born from a movie, opened in 1996 on Cannery Row in Monterey and inspired by Forrest Gump. Thirty years later, the brand had a milestone worth celebrating properly: real events, real creators, and real proof that three decades in, Bubba Gump is still a destination people want to visit and talk about. Bubba Gump came to Relish directly to make that happen, and it worked well enough that the partnership is now expanding across the wider Landry's restaurant portfolio.

The Opportunity
A 30th anniversary is easy to turn into a press release and hard to turn into something people actually want to show up for. Bubba Gump needed the milestone to feel real in four very different markets at once, not like the same corporate announcement copied and pasted across cities.

The challenge: give local creators in Florida, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and the brand's original Monterey home a genuine reason to celebrate, and trust them to make thirty years feel exciting rather than nostalgic for its own sake.

The Strategy
Relish built four distinct activations around one anniversary story, each shaped around what made that specific location worth celebrating.

Key tactics included:

• Gulf Coast celebration: Creators across Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, and the Madeira Beach boardwalk location were briefed to capture the 30th anniversary menu against the water views and boardwalk energy that make Florida's locations some of the brand's most scenic.
• Mall of America takeover: An all-summer activation in Minneapolis leaned into Bubba Gump's role as a nostalgic, family-favorite destination inside one of the country's most visited malls.
• Los Angeles multi-location push: The largest activation by volume, spanning Universal Studios, Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Anaheim-area locations, treated the anniversary as a citywide summer moment rather than a single-restaurant event.
• The origin-story anchor: A single-night, invite-only Relisher dinner at the original 1996 Cannery Row location in Monterey, communal seating, up to $300 comped, an exclusive anniversary menu with collectible glassware, and the actual Forrest Gump bench out front for the photo every creator wanted.
• Consistent creative discipline: Every brief required at least one dish from the 30th anniversary menu, close-up food shots, and royalty-free audio only, keeping content usable across every market without compliance headaches.
• The tone: nostalgic, celebratory, and unmistakably built around the movie magic that started it all.

The Results

• 37 pieces of creator content
• 835,763 total views
• 40,751 engagements
• 4.9% engagement rate

One Orlando creator's post pulled 525,275 views and 11,800 shares on its own, 63% of the campaign's reach. Even without it, the remaining content still drove over 310,000 views at a 5.0% engagement rate. The smallest activation, the single-night Cannery Row dinner, posted the highest engagement rate of any market at 11.0%, proving the original location outperforms a standard comped meal.
Why It Matters

Bubba Gump didn't need Relish to prove a 30th anniversary is a big deal. It needed proof that a milestone campaign could work as well in Minneapolis as it does in Los Angeles, Florida, and the original Cannery Row dining room where the whole brand began.

It did. Across four markets and three time zones, local creators turned thirty years of history into hundreds of thousands of views and a genuinely viral moment, without losing what made each location distinct. That consistency is exactly why the relationship isn't ending at Bubba Gump. It's expanding across Landry's broader portfolio of restaurant brands, turning one 30th-anniversary campaign into the model for how a multi-brand hospitality group activates local creators nationwide.

Because the clearest sign a campaign worked isn't the views.

It's when the parent company asks for the same playbook everywhere else they operate.

Ready to activate creators across your entire restaurant portfolio? 👉 Let's talk.