Hot Chicken Takeover | Revamp Your Taste & Engage Now

Re-establishing credibility for a beloved local QSR in Columbus

DATE
07.2023

The challenge:
Hot Chicken Takeover was a strong local brand with a loyal and passionate customer base.
However, once Untamed Brands acquired it, the local sentiment was that the brand had ‘sold out’ and sales were tanking.
The challenge was to win back our core customers.

The Idea:
We settled on three key areas of focus.

Continuously innovating our menu
Staying locally relevant
Giving back to our community

The Execution:

Menu innovation was about focusing on quality as well as expanding out the menu to have broader appeal by including more salads and greens. But of course, that doesn’t stop in the kitchen, we also had to figure out the best photography treatment for our new menu to give it maximum appeal. We settled on a simple approach balancing color palette and food, and playing with focus, proximity and abundance to give a feeling of quality and plenty.

We also brought our customers into some of our menu decisions, and made an effort to connect with their passion points.

We provoked customers by adding a new level to our heat range and challenged them to come and face it. Those that could handle it were added to our in-restaurant ‘Wall of Flame’.

When we relaunched our fries, we opened the decision to a vote on social media, with over 7k responses.

Spoilers: the waffle fry won on account of its ability to hold more sauce than its adversaries.

These initiatives bled into our second pillar of staying locally relevant. We had established a relationship with Cavs Point Guard Darius Garland, who also became an investor in the brand. We leveraged his influence to stay locally relevant and promote some of our initiatives. The reel below is Darius and his family taking on the Unholy Challenge.

A young man with a beard and dreadlocks stands outside a restaurant with a sign that says 'Hot Chicken Takeover' to the left. He is wearing a black T-shirt with a red rooster graphic and light blue jeans, with his hands in his pockets, smiling slightly.

We then connected with former Buckeyes Wide Receiver and local legend Braxton Miller to keep our momentum going. We created a bespoke LTO menu item, ‘Braxton’s Loaded Mac & Cheese’, that sold out consistently in its first week.

A man with tattoos and a beard, wearing a red cap, is smiling and eating food from a fork. There is a black container with food in front of him on a red and white checkered table.

We also made a company wide commitment to have one new LTO each month to give customers a good reason to come back and try us out.

Close-up of fried chicken nuggets on a tray lined with red checkered paper, with pickle slices and bread in the background.

Close-up of golden-brown waffles sprinkled with powdered sugar, resting on red and white checkered paper.

Close-up of a cup filled with cooked collard greens on a wooden surface, with a red-and-white checkered napkin in the background.

A bowl of kale Caesar salad topped with grilled chicken, croutons, and salad dressing being held up in front of a wall with a red rooster graphic.

Our last pillar was giving back to the community. HCT already had a connection with Fair Chance, a local charity that worked to ensure formerly incarcerated individuals could re-enter the workforce. We simply doubled down on this connection. We hired an internal Fair Chance Employment Ambassador, who made this policy a priority in our hiring practices.

Group of four people standing in front of yellow lockers, smiling and posing for a photo, with one woman wearing a black jacket, two women wearing red shirts with white logos, and a man in an orange shirt and black cap.

Person wearing a red shirt with white text, flexing their arms in front of a green sign that reads 'Hot Chicken Takeover' and '1417'. The person is standing outside next to a building with wooden siding.

Results:

All the above are just highlights from a campaign that included numerous other initiatives and promotions. It took time, but we did see HCT regain its local market share and begin to grow its 4-wall EBITDA by 0.1% over the course of the following financial year.