The Sunday brunch line at Miss Shirley’s Café’s two locations in Baltimore often stretches to two hours or more. Since April, they’ve offered to let their foursquare mayor jump to the head of the line.

The competition for that coveted honor has been fierce. According to Ryan Goff of agency MGH, Miss Shirley’s has seen a 427% increase in foursquare checkins since the special launched. They’ve heard several anecdotal reports of people visiting more often just to try to earn the mayorship.

As you can see in this chart showing the checkins at their Roland Park location, activity increased dramatically in April.

Goff says, “Miss Shirley’s wanted to engage their customers on a different level by creating this sense of competition. It has turned dining there into this competitive game in which Shirley’s fans are pitted against one another.”

Miss Shirley’s promotes the special with signs and cards stuffed into every check holder that describe foursquare and alert visitors to the offer.

While Miss Shirley’s has been unable to tie the special to an increase in business, they have seen a good bit of positive press, blog posts, tweets, etc. If nothing else, increasing the number of checkins has increased the number of mentions on Twitter and Facebook as users share their checkins with their friends on those networks.

What do you think of Miss Shirley’s mayor special? Would it encourage you to check in more to try to oust the mayor?

/photo on yfrog by @maxwellzorick

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