September 17, 2025 • 45 mins
Discover how Chicken Salad Chick CEO Scott Deviney transformed a 32-location startup into a 309-unit fast-casual empire in under a decade. In this Fast Casual Nation episode, Paul Barron and Cherryh Cansler dive deep into the brand's franchise growth strategies, operational advantages, and expansion secrets. Learn about their "category of one" positioning, market adaptability across demographics, and future growth plans targeting 1,000+ locations.
#FastCasual #FranchiseGrowth #RestaurantIndustry
Get Your Podcast Now! Are you a hospitality or restaurant industry leader looking to amplify your voice and establish yourself as a thought leader? Look no further than SavorFM, the premier podcast platform designed exclusively for hospitality visionaries like you. Take the next step in your industry leadership journey – visit https://www.savor.fm/
Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.
Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory
#FastCasual #FranchiseGrowth #RestaurantIndustry
Get Your Podcast Now! Are you a hospitality or restaurant industry leader looking to amplify your voice and establish yourself as a thought leader? Look no further than SavorFM, the premier podcast platform designed exclusively for hospitality visionaries like you. Take the next step in your industry leadership journey – visit https://www.savor.fm/
Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.
Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are back here on the Fast Casual Nation podcast,
the one that started it all. Of course, today with
me is my co host, Miss share Candler. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm perfect? How are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I see you're on a different setup here. So what
is this?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I got my phone. I've got my phone situation going
on right now. I'm having technical difficulties and if you
can't fix it by unplugging it, I don't know what
to do.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So we're on the phone today.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Well it works great. By the way, do you have
like one of those little stands that you put it on.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I definitely have one of those, but I wasn't planning
on using it, and so I am using a stack
of books I have like.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Tury Good okay here and in Doubt and podcast Land.
You improvise.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
We are adaptable, for sure, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey, listen, We've got a good one today. It's going
to really be diving into not only as you guys know,
we bring a lot of brands on the show and
we go a little bit deeper into where this is
taking us. This one, though, is a little different because
this one kind of started as a startup and then
now over two hundred locations. So we're going to talk
about how Chicken Salad Chick has built a fast casual empire.
(01:09):
The secrets will be revealed today. We'll be right back.
This episode is brought to you by Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
(01:33):
Chefs take the heat all day, every day. Performing under
pressure is what we do. Just like Philadelphia Cream Cheese,
Phillies creamy texture holds up every time, less cracking, more binding.
Ask your distributor for the original Philadelphia Cream Cheese originals
deserve the original. All right, so we're back here on
(01:55):
Fast Casual Nation, Cherl. Let's get into some of the
news today. I know over on the website, you guys
have the catering meeting the Top thirty innovators. What is
this thing? You guys always have a list going on.
What is this?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
We like we like to rank people. We like our list.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So this is the top the movers and Shakers, Top
thirty and catering.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
We partner with Lunchbox for this. As far our second year.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We've I think we got about three hundred nominations and
then the editorial boards work together to narrow on those
to the top thirty and looks.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, jakers create in catering.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Okay, yeah, all.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
So we revealed the list yesterday and we will honor
them and have them at the Catering Workshop in October,
right after the Fast Casual Executive Summit.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
But you know, there's brands made the list Naya, Dave's
Hot Chicken Chopped.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But this is cool because it's not just the brands
at specific people, because catering, as you know, has changed
a lot very much, and restaurants really are putting a
lot of emphasis and money behind it. Finally they're seeing
it like leaving you know, leaving catering off is leaving
money on the table. So this is recognizing that people
who are pushing that forward in each of their brands.
So excited to recognize those people.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You can download the report from Fast Casual for free
and see who made the list.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah I like it. Okay, so we're going to see
a new list for catering. This is good. Further into
the news over on fastcasual dot com, we have is
waffle House all night delivery a threat to Fast Casual.
What is this? What kind of what kind of blasphemy
is this?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I know, you know, I like to do some clickbait
every once in a while, but waffle House is delivering, so,
I mean, I never have a use for waffle House
except for like three o'clock in the morning at diner.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
But now you can get delivered, so you don't even
have to drink and drive anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So what would you get delivered from waffle House? Please?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Tell me this gets a gravy, I guess, but I
feel like it's probably gonna be a little soggy.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I don't know, but I mean people are doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
I don't think that travels well. I'm not sure about
this one. I'm gonna try it. Okay, I'm gonna try it.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
We should both try this weekend, and we probably.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Should do a TikTok for you. I love that. Just yes,
what do we call that muck bang where you eat
the waffle house?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
You know?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, the wall Grady will be dripping.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, no, thank you. We're going to pass on that one. However,
I might try their delivery just to see how fast
they are and if the food holds, yeah, because that's something.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Holding eggs and that would be kind of hard.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Scrambles are okay to hold if you've got in a burrito,
those do pretty well. Yeah, a waffle man, I can't
hold a waffle on a Saturday morning for more.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Now, Yill soggy, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, all right, well listen, we're going to talk about
Chicken Salad's chick today and it's going to be a
good one because this will get into some details. We're
going to bring in Scott Deviny, who joined them as
the CEO and president back in May of twenty fifteen.
He's been there for a while. He also came over
from the restaurant industry as well. But this guy has
a dark past. He was a banker, is a money man.
(05:03):
He was a banker, which he worked in the space.
So I got to get some of the secrets that
Scott's going to tell us about. So let's bring him
into the show. Scott, welcome in. How are you?
Speaker 4 (05:14):
And I'm doing great? Paul, thanks for you and Scherff
for having me on. Can't wait to talk in this
whole waffle house discussion. Come on anywhere in the South.
You know waffle house is good.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Well, hey, chicken o Waffles. You know this is a
big thing in the South, so that's for sure. Hey, Scott,
give us a rundown on where chicken Salad Chick is today.
You guys came out of really kind of came out
of nowhere, a very embryonic brand, one that was kind
of just growing. You of course have been there for
quite some time. How have you been able to direct
(05:45):
the brand? And where are you today?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
So we are three hundred and nine locations as of today. Wow,
at half the country. You know, it's really an interesting
story because a lot of brands, you know, start off
as that founder led story, and we're no different. So
in two thousand and eight, Kevin and Stacey Brown opened
the first Chicken Seli Chick restaurant Auburn, Alabama, and it
(06:11):
was you know, take out drive through, only they had
no dine in seating. That was going to be in
a small shop in Auburn. And it took off and
between two thousand and eight twenty twelve they opened three
more or two more restaurants at three total within Auburn.
Then all the requests were coming in for franchising, so
in twenty twelve they started franchising the business. And I
(06:34):
learned about it sort of in the middle of fourteen,
and I was trying to figure out my next step,
which I'll give you my background a little bit more.
But I parted up with a private equity group and
we bought the business May of twenty fifteen. I stepped
in as the CEO. That day. We had thirty two
restaurants in six states. At that's crazy, like eight company
(06:55):
restaurants in twenty four franchise stores in May of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Ten x the brand, you know, basically in ten years.
That's a pretty good record. All right. So you were
in the banking business, you were working with restaurants, So
what made you leap into running the operation?
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Paul, it's early. We probably need booze for this story.
I am one of the few that when the gates
opened to the bank, I ran out and didn't look back.
So I spent about thirteen years total in banking, and
I'd say about five or six of those was directly
in the food and beverage space. So we used to
bank coke bottlers, beer distributors, liquor and wholesale distributors as
(07:39):
all restaurants. And this was late nineties when Burger King
was selling, you know, hundreds of stores to refranchise out
and create these big franchisees. Pizza Hutt was starting to
sell a lot of stores. You had consolidation in the
Windy's side, you had consolidation in the Appleby's side. So
we were doing a lot of that. And I would
(07:59):
tell you I learned as much about this business as
a banker could learn it. So I would absorb from
whatever operator I was talking to or financing. We would
how you look at the business? How should we look
at the business? You know, doing a lot of industry
work back then, and I fell in love with it.
You know, you learn a little bit that it's people.
Doesn't matter what you're selling necessarily, but it's all people.
(08:20):
And treat people well, take care of the team, take
care of the guests, and generally that will work. There's
a lot of brand work that goes into it, but
generally I work, and so I had this desire to
do it. In October of two thousand and eight, a
buddy of mine we bought nineteen restaurants. We bought nineteen
Wendys from a franchise e. The franchise he had fifty
(08:41):
two Wendys I think at the time, and we bought
nineteen of them in the Metro Atlanta market. So October eight,
two thousand and eight, three days before the market was
really crashing. You know, we were in this great recession,
you know, Cliff and I leave the comfort of banking
and become a Wendy Springatt.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah. Perfect good timing in the sense of the market
crashed in two thousand. I remember this share we were
in Denver. It was the Fast Casual Summit. We were
in Denver. The market is literally crashing on the day
of the summit, and everybody was like very gloomy, you know,
because they knew that, you know, this was an economic turndown.
(09:24):
Obviously we saw that happen, but it opened up a
real estate boom for the industry. Don Fox talks about
this a lot. He thinks that that was the pivotal
point in fast casual growth was in two thousand and
eight when real estate got hammered so hard. Do you
think that was the case for you guys if you
(09:44):
look back in the industry at that time.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah, because it became very difficult to build freestanding buildings. Yeah,
you know, and in the South, particularly in Atlanta at
the time, where all of our restaurants were, we were
built almost as a real estate in banking market. You know,
at the time, you didn't have an industry moving, but
we were real estate development. We were building multi family
housing and single family housing. And when that crash happened,
(10:11):
you know, unemployment really went through the roof people that ordered,
you know, triple bacon eators with Wendy's, they weren't coming
and so our comps got hit a little bit with it,
and it became very expensive to build and rents were exorbitant,
and I think that pushed people into more of this inline,
multi tenant space that we're in today.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, Winny's took a big hit, that was for sure.
I want to leap forward to last year with you guys.
From my research, you opened what forty new restaurants in
twenty four roughly, yes, okay, so forty new restaurants. You
signed a bunch of new franchise deals, so this is
(10:50):
obviously a huge increase. What has led to this acceleration
because normally when a brand gets this size, it slows down,
doesn't speed up. What has been the catalyst for the
acceleration here recently.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Well, I think there were a couple of things at play.
So post COVID, you know, we fell into this slow
down of development, not necessarily because people didn't want to develop,
but you had, you know, post COVID fear. Now you've
got labor issues in twenty one, and then in twenty two,
as we were coming out of it, thought we were
about and hit the gas pedal. You had chicked in.
(11:26):
Prices hit all time highs. So our franchise owners who
were all in the development mode, they sat there and said,
wait a minute, I'm not making as much money because
prices have gone up the commodities, and we couldn't raise
prices fast enough, so that slowed development. And then what
happened in twenty three and four is the pipeline started
building up fast, and you were far enough away from
(11:47):
COVID so that the desire to have only a drive
through restaurant was now starting to subside, and people said,
wait a minute, I don't necessarily have to have a
drive through. I can go back to inline space and
I can maybe feel lesson And so all those factors
helped build our pipeline up so much that we had,
you know, nice record growth in twenty three, nice growth
(12:08):
in twenty four. This year we're going to open like
forty seven restaurants probably total, and next year more like
fifty to sixty. So we go from fifteen or sixteen
percent unit growth to another fifteen or sixteen percent unit growth,
which is.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
What's drawing the franchisees in other than unit sales and opportunity.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Look, I think the financials always have to work, right,
I mean, if the numbers don't work, no one wants
to do it. So the numbers work is number one.
I think we've opened up some more territories. Cell we've
all even very conservative on new states to open again,
back to banking days and you learn what made brand
successful concentric circle growth. Don't just jump all over the country,
(12:48):
you know, open up state by state and in fill
and so we were a little probably too conservative with that.
So I think there's a combination of more states available,
more territories available. The numbers are great, you know when
you when you put all that together. No, by the way,
the brand's bigger. So now we've got more advertising and
more marketing and people see us more. So all of
those things added up. And the less thing, which is
(13:10):
our hidden secret, is we're a brand of one. No,
we're not fighting the burger and pizza and all the
other categories. We're a category of one, there's no one
doing what.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
We do, absolutely, And I also think your focus on
hospitality was a perfect storm too, because coming out of COVID,
people are wanting to dine in and you know, have
those experiences again. And I mean, you guys have always
leaned heavily on your hospitality, So I think that that's helpful.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
No question. And you know, our purpose is spread joy
and rich lives and serve others. And we do it
through great franchise owners that fit the culture, great team
members and managers. And then we try to level our guests.
You know, we always say, if you're having a bad day,
come in and we'll hopefully make your day brighter. And
if you're having a great day, come in and celebrate
with us. So if you can do that over and
over again, and I think there are a few brands
(13:59):
that have done it very well, we're fortunate we've got
a great track record with it. I think our guests
expect it when they come in the door, so we
have to live up to it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Listen, I went over to your store in Coral Springs,
and you know, preceding coming up to this podcast, I
had never been in one of your stores, so I
always liked to do my homework. I went in, and
I will say I was, first of all, I was
kind of taken back with the concept itself. I didn't
think I was a little bit of a doubter A
(14:34):
bunch of others at the time, all right, I'm kind
of a skeptic in general on everything, it feels like.
But I went in. I was pleasantly surprised. I like
the food. The menu was really interesting to me, you know,
and plus, you know, you look at southern food, which
is one of my favorite I was kind of born
and raised in the South, so I get that. One
thing that kind of stuck with me was the people
(14:57):
that you guys had working at that location, very very uplifting,
you know. They just seem like they were in a
good mood. And I'm like, okay, well this is a
little different. You know, most of the time it's like,
what is that that date night? I think it is
as uh, where they someone calls into the restaurant and
they say, you know, they answer this phone, claw You're welcome,
(15:21):
you know, like you're welcome that I answered the phone.
But what do you think is that normal at all
the restaurants? Do you guys do anything that kind of
perk up the staff there or was that just an
unusual experience.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
You know, there are a lot of little sayings we
have around that we want Bubbleshooters, we want people that
idle and happy. It is very intentional because we're in
the hospitality business and I think part of what's happened
in our business over the last decade or more. Labor
is expensive, so you start trying to find ways to
pull labor out of the business. And now you take
(15:55):
your great employees and you overwork them, overtrain them, make
it very mechanical, and now everybody's personality is gone because
you're so busy and trying to do the job of
three people at once. And so what we wanted to
do is say, look, you know, I want great people,
and I want their personality to shine, and I want
(16:16):
them smiling. I want to see their teeth, and you know,
I want some interaction with people. And if you talk
about our menu, which is pretty diverse and has a
lot of flavors. So when you first come in, we
want to ask you have you ever been before, because
if you haven't, now we need to start talking about
the menu. What is your favorite flavor of chicken salad.
How do you like it? Do you like it spicy
or do you like it with fruits and nuts or whatever?
(16:37):
And so we want to be able to have that
dialogue and they'll give you samples and that's just part
of the whole experience.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Do a really good job. It's very it's like the
Chick fil A vibe, I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
A happy feels that way.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, they're not annoyed by your order.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I gave you a new customer to Scott because my
mother in law he loves, you know, this kind of food.
And I told her about it because she was a mccallister's,
like one one day a week, you know regiment. She
always goes to McAllister's, loves it. There's one not too
far from this location. So I said, go up the
(17:15):
road just a little bit and go to this one.
See what you think. Let me know what you think.
And she came back and she was like, whoa, this
is really good. They have more stores down here, and
I was like, no, that I think that's the only one.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
We did have one in Wellington.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Okay, well that's up north.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That's the ways a little bit further and a few
more comings, So we sold a lot more of the
South Florida.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Broward County would be a good development area for you. You know,
you got the right mix of clientele and there's some
real estate, the income is right, you know, it's a
good fit. I'm surprised we haven't seen more fast casual
development in here versus some of these other markets, which
gets me into my next question. In the franchise space,
(17:59):
obviously you're growing, and we've been asking this, Sharon and
I of these second tier markets and when I second
and when I say second tier, I look at you know,
we kind of live in a second tier. I would
call Fort Lauderdale a second tier. Maybe Louisville, you know,
even would be a second tier, but not these major markets.
If you go into Texas, it would probably be more
(18:21):
like a Waco somewhere like that. Are you guys doing
any kind of buildouts in those markets, Paul.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's one of the best parts about the brand from
a development standpoint, are our model works everywhere. So we
have a little bit of a leg up because we're
in all markets so rural, those secondary tertiary we're in
some suburban areas. The one place we don't have a
(18:50):
presence today. Is the pure, pure urban like the downtown segments.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Is it just the real estate part of it's a
real estate.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I think part of it is our model. If you
look at our business generally, let's say between two thousand
and twenty eight hundred square feet, we still do a
good bit of dine in business for lunch, so we
still like to have some seating. That urban market is
more about grab and go less seating. And so because
we have three hundred and nine restaurants and we could
easily have one thousand pretty quickly, we say we'll go
(19:20):
tackle the urban areas later. Let us just keep building
in all the green space. So to your point, the Louisville's,
the Wacos, the Fort Lauderdale's, we can go in all
the suburban markets. We can go in town. I'm from Carrollton, Georgia.
We've got a great restaurant in Carrollton. And you know,
when I first started here, we had about the population
in Carrollton. Let's say it's like twenty to twenty five
thousand people, and I thought that that might be too small.
(19:41):
But we've got a great restaurant that thrives in Carrollton.
So the ability to work across all markets, and our
av is almost the same across all of our states,
and we're about half the country, which is unusual to
have that kind of av band across every one of
your states.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, is it mostly a female for you guys?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, it's it's mostly female. We're certainly female centric and
we target females. And you know it's not unintentional, right,
who makes the purchasing decision in the house. Most of
the time it's female. So we're going after that. And
coming out of the Wendy's world where I was eighteen
to thirty four year old male, I'm very, very thankful
to be more in the female category than the male.
(20:22):
But it's used to be. I would tell you eighty
percent female, and I don't have exact data on it today,
but I tay it's more like sixty.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I see a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I see a lot of men and like construction workers
and things like that on their lunch breaks in ours,
because you know, we're a secondary market and we have
a couple and it's always funny, I think to see
these big burly men eating their chicken salads, but they
seem to really like it, especially when it's hot.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You know it's hot, And you know that gets back
to sometimes the customer base and the employee base. We
don't have friars, we don't have grills. It's not fried food.
It's made from scratch in the restaurant. So you know,
you feel better when you lead. You don't feel like
you're bloated up on a bunch of grease. You feel better.
And our employees like it because they're not surrounded by grease.
(21:09):
When they leave, they don't have to change clothes. They
could just go straight to class if they're a student
or whatever. They don't have to change their uniform. And
I think that's part of the appeal of the brand,
is just having some fresh, made from scratch food in
a clean environment.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, you guys have grown a lot too in terms
of overall size since I think it was twenty twenty one.
If you look at that, typically this has been a
slowdown cycle for fast casual. You guys are up I
think almost forty percent since then in terms of average univolume.
Why do you First of all, do you how are
(21:43):
you doing that? Is it all based on a core
menu or are you looking at upsell strategy what's the
model that you use to get to those kind of numbers,
Because most of the time you would think, I look
at this, I look at the menu, and I'm like,
is there a lot of opportunity for upsot or is
this mostly carry out for later? What's the strategy here?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So it's a a little bit of all those in
a way, I'll tell you. So the one lever we
did pull, as most did, is third party delivery. That's
about ten percent of our business today. A lot of
brands it's twenty or thirty percent. We're still under index
to like ten percent, so we still have a tremendous
amount of growth in that category for sure. And digital
(22:26):
is about ten percent, which is our legacy online business,
not counting three PD, which is about ten percent. Again,
we probably under index there too. But if you think
about our menu, there's about twelve core flavors that different
taste profiles. Some are savory, some are fruits and nuts,
some are traditional, some are spicy. So we have a
taste palette for everybody. But about two years ago we
(22:48):
introduced a melt so it is our hot sandwich which
whatever chicken salad flavor you want, we put a piece
of cheese, run it through a toaster on a croissant.
It's a wonderful sandwich. And that attracted a lot more menu.
It also attracted some dinner business for us. So that
is doing nothing more than adding a toaster. Didn't bring
in any other products except for a toaster, and all
(23:09):
of a sudden, now you have a category that's it's
probably about eight percent of sales for us now for
the melt, and we didn't have it before. So little
things like that where we can do complimentary things to
the menu without changing a whole lot. And it also
gives you some other levers to pull, like a bacon
cheddar melt instead of just a melt. Now, that did
very well as an lto. And then we also are
(23:30):
constantly playing with different flavors, so we try to do
a quarterly lto with a flavor. So now at Southwest Seniorita,
the one over the summer was Maui Mama. So using
either ingredients we have and mixing them differently, or bringing
in one or two ingredients to change the taste for
a file of the chicken salad. That's what our guests
like to see. They might love their fancy Nancy apples,
(23:53):
grapes and pecans all day. I'm going to order it
every time I come, but I really want to sample
it just to see if I like it for the
next time.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right, And though you guys have really pulled that lever too.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Yeah, and it's terrible that we're a six percent of
catering share when we should be twenty or you know,
because it is such a great takeaway.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Great catering brand and good work to do.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
We have a lot it's great upside, right, We've all heard,
so I would say we also we always expected it
to be the grassroots, and it is grassroots. I have
some stores that really kill it and catering they're probably
twenty percent, and I've got the brands six, so we
do definitely have some room to go. We're rolling out
a locating plus in the next sort of three weeks.
(24:37):
I think that'll help our brand a lot. We launched
easy cater as a brand this year, which we've seen
tremendous upside in that business. So you know, these are
just things that we're slowly pulling every level. You can't
do it all at once, but you do what works.
And I think along the lines of that, you've got
to be better at packaging. Yeah, packaging probably was meant
for more of your dine in and your single guests
(24:59):
take out one meal, not necessarily built for that digital space,
and we've got to be better packaging.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, well packaging that comes in those tubs, that's great.
Like when my family gets that a lot for not
like huge cary, but just like you know, six or
seven of us, it works really well.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Well, that's one of the big beauties of the business
that we have is that quick chick. So our to
go business is pretty broad, but when you look at
just the quick chick, which is our bulk pound and
half pound roughly small and large quick chicks is what
we call them, that business is twenty five percent. So
we people love those tubs that you see. I can
(25:36):
grab three or four of those, put them in my
fridge thinking they're going to last for three or four days,
and two days later they're gone because my kids go
in and eat them. I go in and snack on them,
my wife snacks on them. You can find ways to
eat those. You can make a meal, somebody makes a sandwich,
or you just eat it with crackers, and that is
a wonderful piece of business. And oh, by the way,
that's also a great sampling because you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, to get all the difference for seven people.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Now everybody's trying new flavors. I'm introducing it to friends
that come over. It is a great way to sample.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, I'm showing that all on screen. So if you
guys are listening to the audio podcast of this, jump
over here to YouTube. You guys can catch the full
video over here on YouTube. Just search saver FM. All right,
so let's get into competitors because.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
This before you go there. The one thing Paul I
do have to mention starting on menu is the cake
side of our business that I haven't talked about yet.
What is that?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
What do you mean cake?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
So a couple of years ago, one of the areas
we have great cookies that every meal gets a cookie.
You got one when you went to the Coral Spring store.
So we give you this small butter cream frosted cookie
that you get with every meal. But we didn't have
like a dessert per se. So a couple of years
ago we bought a company called Piece of Cake, which
is a forty year old Atlanta based business that was
(26:51):
thriving and great.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
That's what I got right there.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
You got that mini butter Yeah, yes, But the cake
on the other side of the red velvet, the white chocolate.
We bought the cake company because we needed cakes in
our restaurants. We needed some dessert category, so the white
chocolate cake is in all of our restaurants all the time.
The red velvet currently is an lto, so it's just
an added benefit for the brand.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
You have to do something seasonal on a carrot cake
by chance.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
We're looking at carrot as a seasonal strawberry. There's a
great caramel frosted cake that's really good. There's cookies and cream.
There's about twelve flavors a piece of cake, so we're
just trying to find the one.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What about what about going into the regionals because here
in South Florida you need a Delta de Lache. I'm
sure that would do well in South Florida, especially like
in that area. But do you do you try to
match up with the market at all.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
It's funny when we first were expanding pretty aggressively years ago,
we were thinking we were going to need different flavors
for every region. Yeah, what we found is classic carol,
which is our most traditional recipe. And traditional flavor. It's
the number one sellar in every restaurant. Oh okay, the
movement of jalapeno Holly in New Mexico might move one
(28:04):
or two points up or down, but number one's classic Carol.
Number two is fancy nancy generally in every market. So
as much as we say we need to change the
face profiles for those regional flavors, at least you people,
I mean people want to eat their flavors and they
love something different. So we haven't really gone regional with
much of our flavors because we haven't needed to.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Are these people.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Yeah, so one of the name people, oh, I mean,
Sharon knows this. The brilliant thing Kevin and Stacey did
when they were starting this concept back seventeen years ago
or whatever. They named all the flavors after real people.
So Carol is Stacy's aunt, and Sassy's body is named
after her one of her childhood best friends. So every
flavor is named after a real person. I think that
(28:48):
is one of the best things I know.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I was trying to I was trying to talk to
their marketing team in a few months ago to naming
a flavor after me.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But I haven't gotten to do that yet.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
The right flavor. It's got to be the right flavor
for you.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Exactly what would flavor be?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I think that I have some fruit in it.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you put alcohol in in chicken soud?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You can infuse some alcohol in the pineapple, then that'd
be good.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You know, like the margarita style.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
It's perfect.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
All right, So I know you're trying to dodge the question,
which is competitors. All right, so you you start at
the top of the food chain, which is Chick fil A,
that's the qs R king right now. Then you slide
into I would say a mix. I don't know chery
would you put raisin canes as a fast casual or
more of a QS.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, we put We put raisin canes as a
fast casual and Chick fil A definitely QSR.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But you know they compete heavily with fast casuals too.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
So what about Zaxby's. Where would you slide that fast casual?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
The price point? He puts those in the fast casual
slim chickens?
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, all right, So that's a lot. That's a lot
of chicken concepts that are outside of the wings and
the hot chicken that's just other chicken. Okay, how do
you guys win that battle for choice? Because you got
all of this available to you, what do you do?
Speaker 4 (30:16):
This is a great conversation because we joke sometimes that
we don't know which category we fall in. Clearly we're chicken, right,
Yes we're all chicken, but we're not in the category
of fried chicken. Right.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So it's like we look at salad concepts. I'm assuming
because you're a healthier version.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
You almost Again, this goes back to being a category
of one in a way, like we compete with grocery, right,
because grocery all chicken salad and the costcos and the SAMs,
the publics. We compete with the salad companies because people
want better for you food. We compete with chicken clearly
because it's in the name chickens.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
More like salad works most likely.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
So are we a sandwich category because we have sandwiches,
but we also have scoops with crackers. I mean, we
are this cross section of a lot of different categories.
We fall into chicken most of the time because we
are chicken. I mean, that's that's what we are. But
it's so different because we're not just fried chicken or
chicken sandwiches or chicken tenders. We're we're taking chicken and
(31:17):
you know, making twelve different flavors without sauces. We're just
doing different stuff. So we do consider all of those.
Chick fil A, look, they're the gold standard from service, hospitality, consistency.
So anytime we're in the same breath as Chick fil A,
we're pretty happy. But all the others, like Crazing Canes,
they're blowing it out and we're just happy competing with
them all. And we try to do it with great
(31:40):
service and a different taste profile than what they're looking for.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, do you guys track things like NPS score and
how do you measure against some of the other brands
out there, whether it's like social score, you know, yell,
you know reviews, Google reviews. Do you how do you
measure against other brands?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
So we measure, We do it all right. We use
all of the Google, Yelp, Facebook, whatever. We also use
SMG for Voice of the Guest and SMG has a
Fast Casual category. We're usually number two and overall satisfaction
in the Fast Casual category and have been for like
ten years. We're number one and likely to recommend, and
we have been for like most of the last ten years,
(32:23):
number one and revisit all those kind of things. So
we're either number one or two usually in all of
those categories that SMG puts us in and they track
the fast casual.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Second, what is the tools that you guys use for
customer recovery? Do you do anything like that?
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Yeah, and we use a platform called Sochi for all
of review management and things like that so we can
have it in a consolidated place and that seems to
work pretty well. We try to respond to anything going
on in any of the platforms that are out there.
We use that to help consolidate because, as you know,
when you've got this many store rise in the franchisees
(33:01):
and all that stuff, you have to have some consolidated
way to do it. So Sochi has been pretty good
partner for us.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Share we got we got to do the episode on
that because we've talked about that before. About guest recovery
and being able to win back guests, there's got to
be like a best practices that brands are doing. And
absolutely I think we should put a panel together of
like the top three executives that have figured out guest recovery.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think that would be a great thing to get.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Let's do it for soci.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And ovation together too. Yeah, and their clients they can
battle it out.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
It would be such a it's first of all, I
think it'd be helpful, you know, to the audience because
most of our operators and new franchisees that watch this show,
they're trying to figure out how do I not lose
the guests that I've paid all this money to get.
You know, that's a huge issue. Do you guys have
a cost per acquisition right now?
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Scott? We do, and I don't know what that number is.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Our business say, we're capital when we're looking at brands,
that's like the number one thing that I'm starting to
look at is how much does it cost you to
get a guest and keep them just for six months?
Let's forget about the year. What's their frequency number in
that first six months? And what did that cost the
brand to do it? Because that you know, that's marketing,
(34:21):
it's operations. It goes into a lot of things for
sure going forward. Jerah, I know you had some questions.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
You know, we're more and more on loyalty too.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Well, that exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah, you can open up an analyst report without talking
about loyalty. You can't, you know, listen to a CEO
without talking about loyalty helping. We've had a loyalty app
for gosh since twenty fourteen, revamped it a year or
so ago, and you know that's what fifteen to twenty
percent of your business every day is coming through the
loyalty app. And how do you continue to drive more
(34:53):
people to that app? How do you continue to drive
more offers to the app so that your rewards, you know,
you're your cult like followers come and visit you more
often and the frequency goes up.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Well, how are you how are you converting those third
party people to your own app, to your own loyalty platform.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
That's the golden question.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
That is the golden question that I don't know of
anybody who's cracked the egg yet on that one. We
continue to try. We talk about, you know, using our
legacy platform as opposed to the three PD but you know,
just like our guests want to have the chicken style
chick rewards. If you're a diehard uber, each user, you're
(35:35):
using that platform and that platform only because you're trying
to get all of it pass. It's hard to crack
against that. And it's okay. Maybe that's just always the
way it's going to be, and we'll just have our
own segment and they'll have their own segment and we
can all play together.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I don't know, do you know how many users you
have yet?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Right now on the on the app, on the app,
I think we're around a million five users total.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Let's not too shabby.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
This share the rating, they got a four point nine
Rady sixty thousand ratings on this app.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
That's that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Well, I think the usability looks I haven't downloaded this app,
but it looks very friendly in terms of I hate
to say this, but this has a lot of Panera
feel here Scott.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
In that category so too. Again, Paneras had tremendous success.
If I can be, you know, thrown in the world
of Panera, sure, yeah, why not any of those. I'm
pretty happy the king of the marketing.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
But your marketing is more personable and more fun with
like the cartoon and the people and the characters.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
You know. I just it's just it's delightful.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It makes It kind of makes you smile, that logo,
and you know, it's really cute.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It makes you feel good.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So I like you had a good and you got
to You've got a really good social audience. I think
TikTok was the favorite for me. Uh, nice activity, you know,
pretty decent in terms of how you're integrating. Do you
have a social media team that does nothing but this?
What's the what's the strategy for you guys?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
We do. We have a social media team which also
is this really really good social media person. Rebecca does
a wonderful job with it. She's always trying to stay
on the latest trends and you know, I know one
of your episodes recently was around the Taylor Swift dropping
her in the Orange and all this stuff. Oh yeah,
one of the pictures you showed just there was our first,
(37:26):
not my episode, we had an orange episode. Yeah, we're
always trying to stay up on that. And that's a
tough one too, because you know, the trends changed like that,
they change so quickly.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
But you guys also have a lot of user generated
content out there that your fans are so loyal they're
just doing it themselves. I feel like you and Dave's
Hot Chicken. Those are that's another brand that you guys
both have really great following. Our people are just posting
your food and eating your food, muck banging.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
It's funny, it's hard, but we're all like this, right,
We're all consumers. If you find something that you think
no one else knows about, you want to be the
first to yell at them. Then go look at what
I found this great thing, and we have. Luckily, we
have a lot of great guests that feel that way.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Let's get into here at the end, let's get into
kind of the twenty twenty five and beyond. We haven't
started our prediction show yet. By the way, if you
guys want some fast casual predictions or end of year,
send shaa a note okay, and share your email again.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Share a C so c h E r R y
h C at Networldmedia Group dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Perfect. We'll leave a link in the description. But we're
trying to plan for some prediction shows end of year.
What are you guys looking for? Is it tech? Is
it brand?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
All that?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So Scott looking at end of this year and into
twenty six. Is there anything that's on your bullseyeboard right
now for what you guys are up to.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Yeah, the two things I think we're going to be
focused heavily heavily on in addition to just growing and
opening restaurants and you know, keeping the comps moving forward
and everything else. Number one is making sure that our
digital footprint, if you will, continues to stay consistent relevant.
Like we just talked about, things change all the time,
(39:15):
so you know, is everything cohesive? You know, if you
place an order on our legacy app, do you are
you able to track it all the way through to
your house if you're delivering it, or tracking when it's ready?
If you come in the store, do you click curb side,
I'm here or whatever, or tracking it through the third party,
or if you want to go place a catering order
online if you're on your computer versus your phone, then
(39:35):
does a transferaty phone. Just making sure that the digital
footprint is as good as it can be right now
for our brand. That's number one. It is part of
the world, so you have to be best in class
with that. Number two, we're in the middle of a
menu sort of update. You may have seen this when
you went into Coral Springs, but our menu is not
necessarily the easiest to navigate if you've never been in
(39:57):
the store before. So we're actually a launch speak an updated,
refreshed sort of menu board and what it's going to
look like so that at first time guests can come
in and know what to order. Now you might want
help on your flavor, but at least you know the meal,
like how to put a meal together and is it
one side or two sides. So we're in it now.
We're trying to get everything launched by the end of
(40:18):
the year. The feedback has been tremendously positive. You mentioned
upsal like early on in the call. I mean, it
does give you the ability to up sell more. It
gives you ability to add another side item. Because the
grape salad so good, we want to make sure everybody
gets it. So that's the kind of stuff that the
menu is going to help. Would make it much much
easier to read something.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
How do you guys handle kids? Do you have a
kids menu? I mean, what do you have for them?
Speaker 4 (40:40):
We have a kid's menu. We've called it the Little
Chicks Menu for like eight years, and nobody knows the
little chick so we went back to a kid's meal
so you can either get a the most popular things
people get with this either mac and cheese or a
half a sandwich, either half turkey or half chicken, salad, fruit, cookie, pickle,
and then a drink. Cool.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
All right, last question is do you have a last question?
I have one or if you want to? Okay?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
All right?
Speaker 1 (41:08):
So my last question is Fast Casual twenty thirty. All right,
we're just talking about five years look less than five
years away. What does that look like for you? Do
you think we're going to be a lot more third party?
Is AI invading us? Is Fast Casually going to shrink
down to a box with no tables? What do we
(41:28):
got here, Scott?
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I don't think we're that far where it's no tables.
I think it'll be if I had to say right now,
twenty thirty, you're going to have some brands that still
lean into dine in because guests still want to eat in.
It might not be every brand, though, some brands might
move to the Subway Jersey Mike's model where you've got
two tables and most people are getting it to go.
(41:54):
But you're going to have some brands that still have
that feel of dine in. It will be one of them,
Gaba has mentioned that they're moving more towards this. Starbucks
has mentioned moving towards it. So I think you'll have
more and more competitors in the fast casual space. First
of all, it is the most profitable, best in class
sort of deal versus like we talked about real estate
development for single use of property and quick surve So
(42:17):
fast casual seems to be growing like crazy. In my mind,
people want to be in the space, and you'll have
a mix of It won't be very homogenous. It'll be
a little bit more catered to each brand, So some
will have dine in, some won't. Digital will continue to grow.
I believe third party will continue to grow. That's not
going anywhere. I think you'll see a little bit more
refinement of what people are good at today will continue
(42:39):
to be refined in the future.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Share do you think we're going to I mean, you're
tracking this the closest I think in terms of what
brands are actually starting to move in these directions where
there's less dine in. You know, we've had a handful
of on the show here recently where they have no
it's all delivery, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Yeah, But I think that I mean at the same time, though,
we were having other brands double down on their dining
in where we've you know, we talked about fuzzies adding
cocktails and you know, so I think Scott, I think
he's onto something when he's saying, you know, people are
going to pick their lane and then the customers are
going to go accordingly.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah. Interesting, listen, it's gonna twenty third. Maybe that's a
little early. I was maybe another five years after that,
twenty thirty five. I just kind of wondering, are we
going to see the shift that we saw between you know,
because really fast casual has changed a lot since, you know,
since the pandemic. Yeah, both in shrinking the models, the
(43:39):
menus marketing. Third party obviously is a big part of that.
So well, guys, we're going to We're going to get
that and more on more episodes like this. So if
you like them, make sure and hit that little like
button right now. Also subscribe to the show. If you're
over on the audio version of this podcast, leave us
a rating. We love those ratings, man, and we'll even
(44:02):
shout you out on the show. If you give me
a good rating and share a good rating, we'll shout
you out on the show.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
But if you give us a good rating, we're never
saying your name.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, no, I'll dish you on the show.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Hey Scott, it's been great having you on the show.
Thanks so much for coming in. We appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Thanks, Paul, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Thanks Sharon, you bet all right. Share another banger of course.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
You know you guys have the audience and the fans
of this show absolutely unbelievable. Thank you so much. We
love the input and one of the things you can
do to help us grow and help us get good guests,
because the key is we want to be the restaurant
(44:43):
podcast that gets not only the not that we haven't
had good guests, we've had rock star but we want
to make sure that we maintain that rock star status.
You know, it's like a great tour, you know, you
want the best of the best of the best.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I have a good set list, one after another.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
For sure, So let us know. You got to share
his email now. Of course you can drop comments here
on the show itself. Always love your feedback, and again
thanks for jumping in to another episode of Fast Casual Nation.
See you soon.
We are back here on the Fast Casual Nation podcast,
the one that started it all. Of course, today with
me is my co host, Miss share Candler. How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm perfect? How are you today?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I see you're on a different setup here. So what
is this?
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I got my phone. I've got my phone situation going
on right now. I'm having technical difficulties and if you
can't fix it by unplugging it, I don't know what
to do.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
So we're on the phone today.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Well it works great. By the way, do you have
like one of those little stands that you put it on.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I definitely have one of those, but I wasn't planning
on using it, and so I am using a stack
of books I have like.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Tury Good okay here and in Doubt and podcast Land.
You improvise.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
We are adaptable, for sure, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey, listen, We've got a good one today. It's going
to really be diving into not only as you guys know,
we bring a lot of brands on the show and
we go a little bit deeper into where this is
taking us. This one, though, is a little different because
this one kind of started as a startup and then
now over two hundred locations. So we're going to talk
about how Chicken Salad Chick has built a fast casual empire.
(01:09):
The secrets will be revealed today. We'll be right back.
This episode is brought to you by Philadelphia Cream Cheese.
(01:33):
Chefs take the heat all day, every day. Performing under
pressure is what we do. Just like Philadelphia Cream Cheese,
Phillies creamy texture holds up every time, less cracking, more binding.
Ask your distributor for the original Philadelphia Cream Cheese originals
deserve the original. All right, so we're back here on
(01:55):
Fast Casual Nation, Cherl. Let's get into some of the
news today. I know over on the website, you guys
have the catering meeting the Top thirty innovators. What is
this thing? You guys always have a list going on.
What is this?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:06):
We like we like to rank people. We like our list.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
So this is the top the movers and Shakers, Top
thirty and catering.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
We partner with Lunchbox for this. As far our second year.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
We've I think we got about three hundred nominations and
then the editorial boards work together to narrow on those
to the top thirty and looks.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Yeah, jakers create in catering.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Okay, yeah, all.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
So we revealed the list yesterday and we will honor
them and have them at the Catering Workshop in October,
right after the Fast Casual Executive Summit.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
But you know, there's brands made the list Naya, Dave's
Hot Chicken Chopped.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
But this is cool because it's not just the brands
at specific people, because catering, as you know, has changed
a lot very much, and restaurants really are putting a
lot of emphasis and money behind it. Finally they're seeing
it like leaving you know, leaving catering off is leaving
money on the table. So this is recognizing that people
who are pushing that forward in each of their brands.
So excited to recognize those people.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
You can download the report from Fast Casual for free
and see who made the list.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah I like it. Okay, so we're going to see
a new list for catering. This is good. Further into
the news over on fastcasual dot com, we have is
waffle House all night delivery a threat to Fast Casual.
What is this? What kind of what kind of blasphemy
is this?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
I know, you know, I like to do some clickbait
every once in a while, but waffle House is delivering, so,
I mean, I never have a use for waffle House
except for like three o'clock in the morning at diner.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
But now you can get delivered, so you don't even
have to drink and drive anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
So what would you get delivered from waffle House? Please?
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Tell me this gets a gravy, I guess, but I
feel like it's probably gonna be a little soggy.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I don't know, but I mean people are doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
I don't think that travels well. I'm not sure about
this one. I'm gonna try it. Okay, I'm gonna try it.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
We should both try this weekend, and we probably.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Should do a TikTok for you. I love that. Just yes,
what do we call that muck bang where you eat
the waffle house?
Speaker 4 (04:09):
You know?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, the wall Grady will be dripping.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, no, thank you. We're going to pass on that one. However,
I might try their delivery just to see how fast
they are and if the food holds, yeah, because that's something.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Holding eggs and that would be kind of hard.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Scrambles are okay to hold if you've got in a burrito,
those do pretty well. Yeah, a waffle man, I can't
hold a waffle on a Saturday morning for more.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Now, Yill soggy, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, all right, well listen, we're going to talk about
Chicken Salad's chick today and it's going to be a
good one because this will get into some details. We're
going to bring in Scott Deviny, who joined them as
the CEO and president back in May of twenty fifteen.
He's been there for a while. He also came over
from the restaurant industry as well. But this guy has
a dark past. He was a banker, is a money man.
(05:03):
He was a banker, which he worked in the space.
So I got to get some of the secrets that
Scott's going to tell us about. So let's bring him
into the show. Scott, welcome in. How are you?
Speaker 4 (05:14):
And I'm doing great? Paul, thanks for you and Scherff
for having me on. Can't wait to talk in this
whole waffle house discussion. Come on anywhere in the South.
You know waffle house is good.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Well, hey, chicken o Waffles. You know this is a
big thing in the South, so that's for sure. Hey, Scott,
give us a rundown on where chicken Salad Chick is today.
You guys came out of really kind of came out
of nowhere, a very embryonic brand, one that was kind
of just growing. You of course have been there for
quite some time. How have you been able to direct
(05:45):
the brand? And where are you today?
Speaker 4 (05:48):
So we are three hundred and nine locations as of today. Wow,
at half the country. You know, it's really an interesting
story because a lot of brands, you know, start off
as that founder led story, and we're no different. So
in two thousand and eight, Kevin and Stacey Brown opened
the first Chicken Seli Chick restaurant Auburn, Alabama, and it
(06:11):
was you know, take out drive through, only they had
no dine in seating. That was going to be in
a small shop in Auburn. And it took off and
between two thousand and eight twenty twelve they opened three
more or two more restaurants at three total within Auburn.
Then all the requests were coming in for franchising, so
in twenty twelve they started franchising the business. And I
(06:34):
learned about it sort of in the middle of fourteen,
and I was trying to figure out my next step,
which I'll give you my background a little bit more.
But I parted up with a private equity group and
we bought the business May of twenty fifteen. I stepped
in as the CEO. That day. We had thirty two
restaurants in six states. At that's crazy, like eight company
(06:55):
restaurants in twenty four franchise stores in May of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Ten x the brand, you know, basically in ten years.
That's a pretty good record. All right. So you were
in the banking business, you were working with restaurants, So
what made you leap into running the operation?
Speaker 4 (07:17):
Paul, it's early. We probably need booze for this story.
I am one of the few that when the gates
opened to the bank, I ran out and didn't look back.
So I spent about thirteen years total in banking, and
I'd say about five or six of those was directly
in the food and beverage space. So we used to
bank coke bottlers, beer distributors, liquor and wholesale distributors as
(07:39):
all restaurants. And this was late nineties when Burger King
was selling, you know, hundreds of stores to refranchise out
and create these big franchisees. Pizza Hutt was starting to
sell a lot of stores. You had consolidation in the
Windy's side, you had consolidation in the Appleby's side. So
we were doing a lot of that. And I would
(07:59):
tell you I learned as much about this business as
a banker could learn it. So I would absorb from
whatever operator I was talking to or financing. We would
how you look at the business? How should we look
at the business? You know, doing a lot of industry
work back then, and I fell in love with it.
You know, you learn a little bit that it's people.
Doesn't matter what you're selling necessarily, but it's all people.
(08:20):
And treat people well, take care of the team, take
care of the guests, and generally that will work. There's
a lot of brand work that goes into it, but
generally I work, and so I had this desire to
do it. In October of two thousand and eight, a
buddy of mine we bought nineteen restaurants. We bought nineteen
Wendys from a franchise e. The franchise he had fifty
(08:41):
two Wendys I think at the time, and we bought
nineteen of them in the Metro Atlanta market. So October eight,
two thousand and eight, three days before the market was
really crashing. You know, we were in this great recession,
you know, Cliff and I leave the comfort of banking
and become a Wendy Springatt.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah. Perfect good timing in the sense of the market
crashed in two thousand. I remember this share we were
in Denver. It was the Fast Casual Summit. We were
in Denver. The market is literally crashing on the day
of the summit, and everybody was like very gloomy, you know,
because they knew that, you know, this was an economic turndown.
(09:24):
Obviously we saw that happen, but it opened up a
real estate boom for the industry. Don Fox talks about
this a lot. He thinks that that was the pivotal
point in fast casual growth was in two thousand and
eight when real estate got hammered so hard. Do you
think that was the case for you guys if you
(09:44):
look back in the industry at that time.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah, because it became very difficult to build freestanding buildings. Yeah,
you know, and in the South, particularly in Atlanta at
the time, where all of our restaurants were, we were
built almost as a real estate in banking market. You know,
at the time, you didn't have an industry moving, but
we were real estate development. We were building multi family
housing and single family housing. And when that crash happened,
(10:11):
you know, unemployment really went through the roof people that ordered,
you know, triple bacon eators with Wendy's, they weren't coming
and so our comps got hit a little bit with it,
and it became very expensive to build and rents were exorbitant,
and I think that pushed people into more of this inline,
multi tenant space that we're in today.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, Winny's took a big hit, that was for sure.
I want to leap forward to last year with you guys.
From my research, you opened what forty new restaurants in
twenty four roughly, yes, okay, so forty new restaurants. You
signed a bunch of new franchise deals, so this is
(10:50):
obviously a huge increase. What has led to this acceleration
because normally when a brand gets this size, it slows down,
doesn't speed up. What has been the catalyst for the
acceleration here recently.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Well, I think there were a couple of things at play.
So post COVID, you know, we fell into this slow
down of development, not necessarily because people didn't want to develop,
but you had, you know, post COVID fear. Now you've
got labor issues in twenty one, and then in twenty two,
as we were coming out of it, thought we were
about and hit the gas pedal. You had chicked in.
(11:26):
Prices hit all time highs. So our franchise owners who
were all in the development mode, they sat there and said,
wait a minute, I'm not making as much money because
prices have gone up the commodities, and we couldn't raise
prices fast enough, so that slowed development. And then what
happened in twenty three and four is the pipeline started
building up fast, and you were far enough away from
(11:47):
COVID so that the desire to have only a drive
through restaurant was now starting to subside, and people said,
wait a minute, I don't necessarily have to have a
drive through. I can go back to inline space and
I can maybe feel lesson And so all those factors
helped build our pipeline up so much that we had,
you know, nice record growth in twenty three, nice growth
(12:08):
in twenty four. This year we're going to open like
forty seven restaurants probably total, and next year more like
fifty to sixty. So we go from fifteen or sixteen
percent unit growth to another fifteen or sixteen percent unit growth,
which is.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
What's drawing the franchisees in other than unit sales and opportunity.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Look, I think the financials always have to work, right,
I mean, if the numbers don't work, no one wants
to do it. So the numbers work is number one.
I think we've opened up some more territories. Cell we've
all even very conservative on new states to open again,
back to banking days and you learn what made brand
successful concentric circle growth. Don't just jump all over the country,
(12:48):
you know, open up state by state and in fill
and so we were a little probably too conservative with that.
So I think there's a combination of more states available,
more territories available. The numbers are great, you know when
you when you put all that together. No, by the way,
the brand's bigger. So now we've got more advertising and
more marketing and people see us more. So all of
those things added up. And the less thing, which is
(13:10):
our hidden secret, is we're a brand of one. No,
we're not fighting the burger and pizza and all the
other categories. We're a category of one, there's no one
doing what.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
We do, absolutely, And I also think your focus on
hospitality was a perfect storm too, because coming out of COVID,
people are wanting to dine in and you know, have
those experiences again. And I mean, you guys have always
leaned heavily on your hospitality, So I think that that's helpful.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
No question. And you know, our purpose is spread joy
and rich lives and serve others. And we do it
through great franchise owners that fit the culture, great team
members and managers. And then we try to level our guests.
You know, we always say, if you're having a bad day,
come in and we'll hopefully make your day brighter. And
if you're having a great day, come in and celebrate
with us. So if you can do that over and
over again, and I think there are a few brands
(13:59):
that have done it very well, we're fortunate we've got
a great track record with it. I think our guests
expect it when they come in the door, so we
have to live up to it.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Listen, I went over to your store in Coral Springs,
and you know, preceding coming up to this podcast, I
had never been in one of your stores, so I
always liked to do my homework. I went in, and
I will say I was, first of all, I was
kind of taken back with the concept itself. I didn't
think I was a little bit of a doubter A
(14:34):
bunch of others at the time, all right, I'm kind
of a skeptic in general on everything, it feels like.
But I went in. I was pleasantly surprised. I like
the food. The menu was really interesting to me, you know,
and plus, you know, you look at southern food, which
is one of my favorite I was kind of born
and raised in the South, so I get that. One
thing that kind of stuck with me was the people
(14:57):
that you guys had working at that location, very very uplifting,
you know. They just seem like they were in a
good mood. And I'm like, okay, well this is a
little different. You know, most of the time it's like,
what is that that date night? I think it is
as uh, where they someone calls into the restaurant and
they say, you know, they answer this phone, claw You're welcome,
(15:21):
you know, like you're welcome that I answered the phone.
But what do you think is that normal at all
the restaurants? Do you guys do anything that kind of
perk up the staff there or was that just an
unusual experience.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
You know, there are a lot of little sayings we
have around that we want Bubbleshooters, we want people that
idle and happy. It is very intentional because we're in
the hospitality business and I think part of what's happened
in our business over the last decade or more. Labor
is expensive, so you start trying to find ways to
pull labor out of the business. And now you take
(15:55):
your great employees and you overwork them, overtrain them, make
it very mechanical, and now everybody's personality is gone because
you're so busy and trying to do the job of
three people at once. And so what we wanted to
do is say, look, you know, I want great people,
and I want their personality to shine, and I want
(16:16):
them smiling. I want to see their teeth, and you know,
I want some interaction with people. And if you talk
about our menu, which is pretty diverse and has a
lot of flavors. So when you first come in, we
want to ask you have you ever been before, because
if you haven't, now we need to start talking about
the menu. What is your favorite flavor of chicken salad.
How do you like it? Do you like it spicy
or do you like it with fruits and nuts or whatever?
(16:37):
And so we want to be able to have that
dialogue and they'll give you samples and that's just part
of the whole experience.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Do a really good job. It's very it's like the
Chick fil A vibe, I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
A happy feels that way.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, they're not annoyed by your order.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I gave you a new customer to Scott because my
mother in law he loves, you know, this kind of food.
And I told her about it because she was a mccallister's,
like one one day a week, you know regiment. She
always goes to McAllister's, loves it. There's one not too
far from this location. So I said, go up the
(17:15):
road just a little bit and go to this one.
See what you think. Let me know what you think.
And she came back and she was like, whoa, this
is really good. They have more stores down here, and
I was like, no, that I think that's the only one.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
We did have one in Wellington.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Okay, well that's up north.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
That's the ways a little bit further and a few
more comings, So we sold a lot more of the
South Florida.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Broward County would be a good development area for you. You know,
you got the right mix of clientele and there's some
real estate, the income is right, you know, it's a
good fit. I'm surprised we haven't seen more fast casual
development in here versus some of these other markets, which
gets me into my next question. In the franchise space,
(17:59):
obviously you're growing, and we've been asking this, Sharon and
I of these second tier markets and when I second
and when I say second tier, I look at you know,
we kind of live in a second tier. I would
call Fort Lauderdale a second tier. Maybe Louisville, you know,
even would be a second tier, but not these major markets.
If you go into Texas, it would probably be more
(18:21):
like a Waco somewhere like that. Are you guys doing
any kind of buildouts in those markets, Paul.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
It's one of the best parts about the brand from
a development standpoint, are our model works everywhere. So we
have a little bit of a leg up because we're
in all markets so rural, those secondary tertiary we're in
some suburban areas. The one place we don't have a
(18:50):
presence today. Is the pure, pure urban like the downtown segments.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Is it just the real estate part of it's a
real estate.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I think part of it is our model. If you
look at our business generally, let's say between two thousand
and twenty eight hundred square feet, we still do a
good bit of dine in business for lunch, so we
still like to have some seating. That urban market is
more about grab and go less seating. And so because
we have three hundred and nine restaurants and we could
easily have one thousand pretty quickly, we say we'll go
(19:20):
tackle the urban areas later. Let us just keep building
in all the green space. So to your point, the Louisville's,
the Wacos, the Fort Lauderdale's, we can go in all
the suburban markets. We can go in town. I'm from Carrollton, Georgia.
We've got a great restaurant in Carrollton. And you know,
when I first started here, we had about the population
in Carrollton. Let's say it's like twenty to twenty five
thousand people, and I thought that that might be too small.
(19:41):
But we've got a great restaurant that thrives in Carrollton.
So the ability to work across all markets, and our
av is almost the same across all of our states,
and we're about half the country, which is unusual to
have that kind of av band across every one of
your states.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, is it mostly a female for you guys?
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, it's it's mostly female. We're certainly female centric and
we target females. And you know it's not unintentional, right,
who makes the purchasing decision in the house. Most of
the time it's female. So we're going after that. And
coming out of the Wendy's world where I was eighteen
to thirty four year old male, I'm very, very thankful
to be more in the female category than the male.
(20:22):
But it's used to be. I would tell you eighty
percent female, and I don't have exact data on it today,
but I tay it's more like sixty.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I see a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I see a lot of men and like construction workers
and things like that on their lunch breaks in ours,
because you know, we're a secondary market and we have
a couple and it's always funny, I think to see
these big burly men eating their chicken salads, but they
seem to really like it, especially when it's hot.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
You know it's hot, And you know that gets back
to sometimes the customer base and the employee base. We
don't have friars, we don't have grills. It's not fried food.
It's made from scratch in the restaurant. So you know,
you feel better when you lead. You don't feel like
you're bloated up on a bunch of grease. You feel better.
And our employees like it because they're not surrounded by grease.
(21:09):
When they leave, they don't have to change clothes. They
could just go straight to class if they're a student
or whatever. They don't have to change their uniform. And
I think that's part of the appeal of the brand,
is just having some fresh, made from scratch food in
a clean environment.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, you guys have grown a lot too in terms
of overall size since I think it was twenty twenty one.
If you look at that, typically this has been a
slowdown cycle for fast casual. You guys are up I
think almost forty percent since then in terms of average univolume.
Why do you First of all, do you how are
(21:43):
you doing that? Is it all based on a core
menu or are you looking at upsell strategy what's the
model that you use to get to those kind of numbers,
Because most of the time you would think, I look
at this, I look at the menu, and I'm like,
is there a lot of opportunity for upsot or is
this mostly carry out for later? What's the strategy here?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So it's a a little bit of all those in
a way, I'll tell you. So the one lever we
did pull, as most did, is third party delivery. That's
about ten percent of our business today. A lot of
brands it's twenty or thirty percent. We're still under index
to like ten percent, so we still have a tremendous
amount of growth in that category for sure. And digital
(22:26):
is about ten percent, which is our legacy online business,
not counting three PD, which is about ten percent. Again,
we probably under index there too. But if you think
about our menu, there's about twelve core flavors that different
taste profiles. Some are savory, some are fruits and nuts,
some are traditional, some are spicy. So we have a
taste palette for everybody. But about two years ago we
(22:48):
introduced a melt so it is our hot sandwich which
whatever chicken salad flavor you want, we put a piece
of cheese, run it through a toaster on a croissant.
It's a wonderful sandwich. And that attracted a lot more menu.
It also attracted some dinner business for us. So that
is doing nothing more than adding a toaster. Didn't bring
in any other products except for a toaster, and all
(23:09):
of a sudden, now you have a category that's it's
probably about eight percent of sales for us now for
the melt, and we didn't have it before. So little
things like that where we can do complimentary things to
the menu without changing a whole lot. And it also
gives you some other levers to pull, like a bacon
cheddar melt instead of just a melt. Now, that did
very well as an lto. And then we also are
(23:30):
constantly playing with different flavors, so we try to do
a quarterly lto with a flavor. So now at Southwest Seniorita,
the one over the summer was Maui Mama. So using
either ingredients we have and mixing them differently, or bringing
in one or two ingredients to change the taste for
a file of the chicken salad. That's what our guests
like to see. They might love their fancy Nancy apples,
(23:53):
grapes and pecans all day. I'm going to order it
every time I come, but I really want to sample
it just to see if I like it for the
next time.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right, And though you guys have really pulled that lever too.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
Yeah, and it's terrible that we're a six percent of
catering share when we should be twenty or you know,
because it is such a great takeaway.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Great catering brand and good work to do.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
We have a lot it's great upside, right, We've all heard,
so I would say we also we always expected it
to be the grassroots, and it is grassroots. I have
some stores that really kill it and catering they're probably
twenty percent, and I've got the brands six, so we
do definitely have some room to go. We're rolling out
a locating plus in the next sort of three weeks.
(24:37):
I think that'll help our brand a lot. We launched
easy cater as a brand this year, which we've seen
tremendous upside in that business. So you know, these are
just things that we're slowly pulling every level. You can't
do it all at once, but you do what works.
And I think along the lines of that, you've got
to be better at packaging. Yeah, packaging probably was meant
for more of your dine in and your single guests
(24:59):
take out one meal, not necessarily built for that digital space,
and we've got to be better packaging.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, well packaging that comes in those tubs, that's great.
Like when my family gets that a lot for not
like huge cary, but just like you know, six or
seven of us, it works really well.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
Well, that's one of the big beauties of the business
that we have is that quick chick. So our to
go business is pretty broad, but when you look at
just the quick chick, which is our bulk pound and
half pound roughly small and large quick chicks is what
we call them, that business is twenty five percent. So
we people love those tubs that you see. I can
(25:36):
grab three or four of those, put them in my
fridge thinking they're going to last for three or four days,
and two days later they're gone because my kids go
in and eat them. I go in and snack on them,
my wife snacks on them. You can find ways to
eat those. You can make a meal, somebody makes a sandwich,
or you just eat it with crackers, and that is
a wonderful piece of business. And oh, by the way,
that's also a great sampling because you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, to get all the difference for seven people.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Now everybody's trying new flavors. I'm introducing it to friends
that come over. It is a great way to sample.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, I'm showing that all on screen. So if you
guys are listening to the audio podcast of this, jump
over here to YouTube. You guys can catch the full
video over here on YouTube. Just search saver FM. All right,
so let's get into competitors because.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
This before you go there. The one thing Paul I
do have to mention starting on menu is the cake
side of our business that I haven't talked about yet.
What is that?
Speaker 1 (26:29):
What do you mean cake?
Speaker 4 (26:30):
So a couple of years ago, one of the areas
we have great cookies that every meal gets a cookie.
You got one when you went to the Coral Spring store.
So we give you this small butter cream frosted cookie
that you get with every meal. But we didn't have
like a dessert per se. So a couple of years
ago we bought a company called Piece of Cake, which
is a forty year old Atlanta based business that was
(26:51):
thriving and great.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
That's what I got right there.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
You got that mini butter Yeah, yes, But the cake
on the other side of the red velvet, the white chocolate.
We bought the cake company because we needed cakes in
our restaurants. We needed some dessert category, so the white
chocolate cake is in all of our restaurants all the time.
The red velvet currently is an lto, so it's just
an added benefit for the brand.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
You have to do something seasonal on a carrot cake
by chance.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
We're looking at carrot as a seasonal strawberry. There's a
great caramel frosted cake that's really good. There's cookies and cream.
There's about twelve flavors a piece of cake, so we're
just trying to find the one.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
What about what about going into the regionals because here
in South Florida you need a Delta de Lache. I'm
sure that would do well in South Florida, especially like
in that area. But do you do you try to
match up with the market at all.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
It's funny when we first were expanding pretty aggressively years ago,
we were thinking we were going to need different flavors
for every region. Yeah, what we found is classic carol,
which is our most traditional recipe. And traditional flavor. It's
the number one sellar in every restaurant. Oh okay, the
movement of jalapeno Holly in New Mexico might move one
(28:04):
or two points up or down, but number one's classic Carol.
Number two is fancy nancy generally in every market. So
as much as we say we need to change the
face profiles for those regional flavors, at least you people,
I mean people want to eat their flavors and they
love something different. So we haven't really gone regional with
much of our flavors because we haven't needed to.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Are these people.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
Yeah, so one of the name people, oh, I mean,
Sharon knows this. The brilliant thing Kevin and Stacey did
when they were starting this concept back seventeen years ago
or whatever. They named all the flavors after real people.
So Carol is Stacy's aunt, and Sassy's body is named
after her one of her childhood best friends. So every
flavor is named after a real person. I think that
(28:48):
is one of the best things I know.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I was trying to I was trying to talk to
their marketing team in a few months ago to naming
a flavor after me.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But I haven't gotten to do that yet.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
The right flavor. It's got to be the right flavor
for you.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Exactly what would flavor be?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I think that I have some fruit in it.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Do you put alcohol in in chicken soud?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
You can infuse some alcohol in the pineapple, then that'd
be good.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You know, like the margarita style.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
It's perfect.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
All right, So I know you're trying to dodge the question,
which is competitors. All right, so you you start at
the top of the food chain, which is Chick fil A,
that's the qs R king right now. Then you slide
into I would say a mix. I don't know chery
would you put raisin canes as a fast casual or
more of a QS.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Yeah, yeah, we put We put raisin canes as a
fast casual and Chick fil A definitely QSR.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
But you know they compete heavily with fast casuals too.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
So what about Zaxby's. Where would you slide that fast casual?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
The price point? He puts those in the fast casual
slim chickens?
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, all right, So that's a lot. That's a lot
of chicken concepts that are outside of the wings and
the hot chicken that's just other chicken. Okay, how do
you guys win that battle for choice? Because you got
all of this available to you, what do you do?
Speaker 4 (30:16):
This is a great conversation because we joke sometimes that
we don't know which category we fall in. Clearly we're chicken, right,
Yes we're all chicken, but we're not in the category
of fried chicken. Right.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
So it's like we look at salad concepts. I'm assuming
because you're a healthier version.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
You almost Again, this goes back to being a category
of one in a way, like we compete with grocery, right,
because grocery all chicken salad and the costcos and the SAMs,
the publics. We compete with the salad companies because people
want better for you food. We compete with chicken clearly
because it's in the name chickens.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
More like salad works most likely.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
So are we a sandwich category because we have sandwiches,
but we also have scoops with crackers. I mean, we
are this cross section of a lot of different categories.
We fall into chicken most of the time because we
are chicken. I mean, that's that's what we are. But
it's so different because we're not just fried chicken or
chicken sandwiches or chicken tenders. We're we're taking chicken and
(31:17):
you know, making twelve different flavors without sauces. We're just
doing different stuff. So we do consider all of those.
Chick fil A, look, they're the gold standard from service, hospitality, consistency.
So anytime we're in the same breath as Chick fil A,
we're pretty happy. But all the others, like Crazing Canes,
they're blowing it out and we're just happy competing with
them all. And we try to do it with great
(31:40):
service and a different taste profile than what they're looking for.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, do you guys track things like NPS score and
how do you measure against some of the other brands
out there, whether it's like social score, you know, yell,
you know reviews, Google reviews. Do you how do you
measure against other brands?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
So we measure, We do it all right. We use
all of the Google, Yelp, Facebook, whatever. We also use
SMG for Voice of the Guest and SMG has a
Fast Casual category. We're usually number two and overall satisfaction
in the Fast Casual category and have been for like
ten years. We're number one and likely to recommend, and
we have been for like most of the last ten years,
(32:23):
number one and revisit all those kind of things. So
we're either number one or two usually in all of
those categories that SMG puts us in and they track
the fast casual.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Second, what is the tools that you guys use for
customer recovery? Do you do anything like that?
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Yeah, and we use a platform called Sochi for all
of review management and things like that so we can
have it in a consolidated place and that seems to
work pretty well. We try to respond to anything going
on in any of the platforms that are out there.
We use that to help consolidate because, as you know,
when you've got this many store rise in the franchisees
(33:01):
and all that stuff, you have to have some consolidated
way to do it. So Sochi has been pretty good
partner for us.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Share we got we got to do the episode on
that because we've talked about that before. About guest recovery
and being able to win back guests, there's got to
be like a best practices that brands are doing. And
absolutely I think we should put a panel together of
like the top three executives that have figured out guest recovery.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
I think that would be a great thing to get.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Let's do it for soci.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
And ovation together too. Yeah, and their clients they can
battle it out.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
It would be such a it's first of all, I
think it'd be helpful, you know, to the audience because
most of our operators and new franchisees that watch this show,
they're trying to figure out how do I not lose
the guests that I've paid all this money to get.
You know, that's a huge issue. Do you guys have
a cost per acquisition right now?
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Scott? We do, and I don't know what that number is.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Our business say, we're capital when we're looking at brands,
that's like the number one thing that I'm starting to
look at is how much does it cost you to
get a guest and keep them just for six months?
Let's forget about the year. What's their frequency number in
that first six months? And what did that cost the
brand to do it? Because that you know, that's marketing,
(34:21):
it's operations. It goes into a lot of things for
sure going forward. Jerah, I know you had some questions.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
You know, we're more and more on loyalty too.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Well, that exactly exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah, you can open up an analyst report without talking
about loyalty. You can't, you know, listen to a CEO
without talking about loyalty helping. We've had a loyalty app
for gosh since twenty fourteen, revamped it a year or
so ago, and you know that's what fifteen to twenty
percent of your business every day is coming through the
loyalty app. And how do you continue to drive more
(34:53):
people to that app? How do you continue to drive
more offers to the app so that your rewards, you know,
you're your cult like followers come and visit you more
often and the frequency goes up.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Well, how are you how are you converting those third
party people to your own app, to your own loyalty platform.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
That's the golden question.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
That is the golden question that I don't know of
anybody who's cracked the egg yet on that one. We
continue to try. We talk about, you know, using our
legacy platform as opposed to the three PD but you know,
just like our guests want to have the chicken style
chick rewards. If you're a diehard uber, each user, you're
(35:35):
using that platform and that platform only because you're trying
to get all of it pass. It's hard to crack
against that. And it's okay. Maybe that's just always the
way it's going to be, and we'll just have our
own segment and they'll have their own segment and we
can all play together.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I don't know, do you know how many users you
have yet?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Right now on the on the app, on the app,
I think we're around a million five users total.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Let's not too shabby.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
This share the rating, they got a four point nine
Rady sixty thousand ratings on this app.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
That's that's impressive.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Well, I think the usability looks I haven't downloaded this app,
but it looks very friendly in terms of I hate
to say this, but this has a lot of Panera
feel here Scott.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
In that category so too. Again, Paneras had tremendous success.
If I can be, you know, thrown in the world
of Panera, sure, yeah, why not any of those. I'm
pretty happy the king of the marketing.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
But your marketing is more personable and more fun with
like the cartoon and the people and the characters.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
You know. I just it's just it's delightful.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
It makes It kind of makes you smile, that logo,
and you know, it's really cute.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
It makes you feel good.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So I like you had a good and you got
to You've got a really good social audience. I think
TikTok was the favorite for me. Uh, nice activity, you know,
pretty decent in terms of how you're integrating. Do you
have a social media team that does nothing but this?
What's the what's the strategy for you guys?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
We do. We have a social media team which also
is this really really good social media person. Rebecca does
a wonderful job with it. She's always trying to stay
on the latest trends and you know, I know one
of your episodes recently was around the Taylor Swift dropping
her in the Orange and all this stuff. Oh yeah,
one of the pictures you showed just there was our first,
(37:26):
not my episode, we had an orange episode. Yeah, we're
always trying to stay up on that. And that's a
tough one too, because you know, the trends changed like that,
they change so quickly.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
But you guys also have a lot of user generated
content out there that your fans are so loyal they're
just doing it themselves. I feel like you and Dave's
Hot Chicken. Those are that's another brand that you guys
both have really great following. Our people are just posting
your food and eating your food, muck banging.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
It's funny, it's hard, but we're all like this, right,
We're all consumers. If you find something that you think
no one else knows about, you want to be the
first to yell at them. Then go look at what
I found this great thing, and we have. Luckily, we
have a lot of great guests that feel that way.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Let's get into here at the end, let's get into
kind of the twenty twenty five and beyond. We haven't
started our prediction show yet. By the way, if you
guys want some fast casual predictions or end of year,
send shaa a note okay, and share your email again.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Share a C so c h E r R y
h C at Networldmedia Group dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Perfect. We'll leave a link in the description. But we're
trying to plan for some prediction shows end of year.
What are you guys looking for? Is it tech? Is
it brand?
Speaker 3 (38:43):
All that?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
So Scott looking at end of this year and into
twenty six. Is there anything that's on your bullseyeboard right
now for what you guys are up to.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Yeah, the two things I think we're going to be
focused heavily heavily on in addition to just growing and
opening restaurants and you know, keeping the comps moving forward
and everything else. Number one is making sure that our
digital footprint, if you will, continues to stay consistent relevant.
Like we just talked about, things change all the time,
(39:15):
so you know, is everything cohesive? You know, if you
place an order on our legacy app, do you are
you able to track it all the way through to
your house if you're delivering it, or tracking when it's ready?
If you come in the store, do you click curb side,
I'm here or whatever, or tracking it through the third party,
or if you want to go place a catering order
online if you're on your computer versus your phone, then
(39:35):
does a transferaty phone. Just making sure that the digital
footprint is as good as it can be right now
for our brand. That's number one. It is part of
the world, so you have to be best in class
with that. Number two, we're in the middle of a
menu sort of update. You may have seen this when
you went into Coral Springs, but our menu is not
necessarily the easiest to navigate if you've never been in
(39:57):
the store before. So we're actually a launch speak an updated,
refreshed sort of menu board and what it's going to
look like so that at first time guests can come
in and know what to order. Now you might want
help on your flavor, but at least you know the meal,
like how to put a meal together and is it
one side or two sides. So we're in it now.
We're trying to get everything launched by the end of
(40:18):
the year. The feedback has been tremendously positive. You mentioned
upsal like early on in the call. I mean, it
does give you the ability to up sell more. It
gives you ability to add another side item. Because the
grape salad so good, we want to make sure everybody
gets it. So that's the kind of stuff that the
menu is going to help. Would make it much much
easier to read something.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
How do you guys handle kids? Do you have a
kids menu? I mean, what do you have for them?
Speaker 4 (40:40):
We have a kid's menu. We've called it the Little
Chicks Menu for like eight years, and nobody knows the
little chick so we went back to a kid's meal
so you can either get a the most popular things
people get with this either mac and cheese or a
half a sandwich, either half turkey or half chicken, salad, fruit, cookie, pickle,
and then a drink. Cool.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
All right, last question is do you have a last question?
I have one or if you want to? Okay?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
All right?
Speaker 1 (41:08):
So my last question is Fast Casual twenty thirty. All right,
we're just talking about five years look less than five
years away. What does that look like for you? Do
you think we're going to be a lot more third party?
Is AI invading us? Is Fast Casually going to shrink
down to a box with no tables? What do we
(41:28):
got here, Scott?
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I don't think we're that far where it's no tables.
I think it'll be if I had to say right now,
twenty thirty, you're going to have some brands that still
lean into dine in because guests still want to eat in.
It might not be every brand, though, some brands might
move to the Subway Jersey Mike's model where you've got
two tables and most people are getting it to go.
(41:54):
But you're going to have some brands that still have
that feel of dine in. It will be one of them,
Gaba has mentioned that they're moving more towards this. Starbucks
has mentioned moving towards it. So I think you'll have
more and more competitors in the fast casual space. First
of all, it is the most profitable, best in class
sort of deal versus like we talked about real estate
development for single use of property and quick surve So
(42:17):
fast casual seems to be growing like crazy. In my mind,
people want to be in the space, and you'll have
a mix of It won't be very homogenous. It'll be
a little bit more catered to each brand, So some
will have dine in, some won't. Digital will continue to grow.
I believe third party will continue to grow. That's not
going anywhere. I think you'll see a little bit more
refinement of what people are good at today will continue
(42:39):
to be refined in the future.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Share do you think we're going to I mean, you're
tracking this the closest I think in terms of what
brands are actually starting to move in these directions where
there's less dine in. You know, we've had a handful
of on the show here recently where they have no
it's all delivery, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Yeah, But I think that I mean at the same time, though,
we were having other brands double down on their dining
in where we've you know, we talked about fuzzies adding
cocktails and you know, so I think Scott, I think
he's onto something when he's saying, you know, people are
going to pick their lane and then the customers are
going to go accordingly.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah. Interesting, listen, it's gonna twenty third. Maybe that's a
little early. I was maybe another five years after that,
twenty thirty five. I just kind of wondering, are we
going to see the shift that we saw between you know,
because really fast casual has changed a lot since, you know,
since the pandemic. Yeah, both in shrinking the models, the
(43:39):
menus marketing. Third party obviously is a big part of that.
So well, guys, we're going to We're going to get
that and more on more episodes like this. So if
you like them, make sure and hit that little like
button right now. Also subscribe to the show. If you're
over on the audio version of this podcast, leave us
a rating. We love those ratings, man, and we'll even
(44:02):
shout you out on the show. If you give me
a good rating and share a good rating, we'll shout
you out on the show.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
But if you give us a good rating, we're never
saying your name.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, no, I'll dish you on the show.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
Hey Scott, it's been great having you on the show.
Thanks so much for coming in. We appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Thanks, Paul, appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
Thanks Sharon, you bet all right. Share another banger of course.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
You know you guys have the audience and the fans
of this show absolutely unbelievable. Thank you so much. We
love the input and one of the things you can
do to help us grow and help us get good guests,
because the key is we want to be the restaurant
(44:43):
podcast that gets not only the not that we haven't
had good guests, we've had rock star but we want
to make sure that we maintain that rock star status.
You know, it's like a great tour, you know, you
want the best of the best of the best.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
I have a good set list, one after another.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
For sure, So let us know. You got to share
his email now. Of course you can drop comments here
on the show itself. Always love your feedback, and again
thanks for jumping in to another episode of Fast Casual Nation.
See you soon.
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