It’s fun when restaurateurs come up with creative solutions to problems. The biggest one out there right now, of course, is the customer who has become a little less visible and needs a boost to kickstart his dining out trips.  Lots of special promotions are going on, but sometimes the clever ones just win for their targeted focus.

Danny Meyer is one such restaurant owner. He literally has an empire of great restaurants in New York City including some of the top Zagat winners: Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, and Eleven Madison Park, all earning  the guide’s top food ratings. He is a man who has written extensively about hospitality and what it takes to open/run a restaurant. The industry icon has done well, but believes in realistic marketing.

The solution: a promotion that in itself sounds like a curative. “What this town could use right now is a good bowl of chicken soup.” Each chef has created a chicken soup that matches the individual restaurant’s culinary approach. Even Blue Smoke, his BBQ spot, has found a soulful match:  smoked chicken and wild rice soup. Only a little sad that Matzah Ball Soup didn’t make the cut at any of the spots!

As is typical of the corporation’s generosity within the restaurant world, every bowl of chicken soup sold during the month of March promotion puts $2 into the coffers of City Harvest to help the hungry.

This is what the country needs: a warm approach to dwindling sales; a tonic for the soul. That’s what chicken soup even in its most adaptive state brings to the table. Get on board restaurateurs, find your personal soul.

Let’s hear it for heart-warming promotions.