Church’s Chicken Consumers want Delivery

Food delivery has been gaining speed for over 30 years and pizza has been the mainstay growth driver fro some time.  However, regular readers of this blog know that KFC of Canada 18 years ago was posting delivery numbers of over 20%. 

Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® was working with KFC Canada on elevating online ordering and delivery back in the day with cyberslice and Food.com and one has to wonder how could it have taken a chain the size of Church’s Chicken so long to discover delivery?  Then tout it as if it was the next coming of the chain?

We ask does your marketing, positioning, and business model look more like yesterday than today?  Now figure consider this Church’s Chicken spent a year studying the logistics of third-party delivery before beginning a rollout, an upfront investment that executives cite as a key reason for the rapid-fire adoption now underway within the chain. 

Hector Munoz, global CMO for the 1,078-unit quick-service brand stated “It’s a lot easier than we thought it would be,”  “We did our homework all of 2017 to prepare for executing in 2018.” Pete Servold, EVP of U.S. operations for the largely franchised brand continued “We studied it so much that we went into it with our eyes wide open,” Johnson contends they should have opened their eyes 20+ years ago and they look like a chain of 2000 not one like today or tomorrow.

Still, the shift into delivery was not without its surprises. Church’s decided to forge ahead with the service even though customers can’t yet use the brand’s app to place delivery orders. Instead, they order through the apps of Church’s four third-party partners, and the brand learned those users aren’t typical Church’s customers.

Servold noted that Church’s core in-store product is bone-in chicken then stated “We see probably triple the number of tender sales [through delivery], which is a good indication that these are new customers,” Johnson was not surprised stating customers move and brands must move with them.  Today’s customers are dynamic not static brands that want to stay relevant must be dynamic as well. 

Inching ahead Church’s is working on an order-and-pay-ahead function for its app, as well as a catering program. For the sake of the brand, franchisee let’s hope they don’t take 20 years to figure out their next step forward. 

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.