The Food Scout

One of the great things I love about being a freelance columnist for QSR Magazine is that it gives me an excuse to talk to a lot of very interesting and experienced marketers at America’s leading quickservice chains. The downside is that column space and topic matter rarely give me room for more than a couple of quick soundbites.

So I’m planning to start sharing all that other great interview information that doesn’t make the cut, but can be very insightful and revealing about what’s going on in the marketing minds at big burger chains.

For example, last week I spoke with Brad Haley, EVP of marketing for Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurants. Here are some of the more interesting Q&A part of our conversation.

Q: Tell me about your view of innovation as a marketing tool.

A. New product development is a very important part of our overall marketing strategy, simply because it’s very effective for us. Our rationale for new products is: new products are the equivalent of our daily specials. Given the logistical demands of sourcing products, training, etc., we can’t literally do this, but we do LTOs that are 2 months in duration. They serve the same purpose: instead of consumers being bored by a static menu, we increase their frequency to a restaurant.”

Q: Has the economic downturn caused you to change anything about how you approach marketing and new menu introductions?

A: Have we changed this in the last few years? Not dramatically. Before the economy started to go south, we had pioneered a line of burgers that we called “meat-on-meat” burgers – or as jay leno joked “meat as a condiment”: pastrami burger, philly cheesesteak burger. We’ve also done a prime rib burger. Those were very very popular for us, but because they were protein on protein, they were fairly costly, which translated to a high food cost. We’ve shied away from this in the current economy, except now we have the French dip burger. But generally speaking, we don’t do as many as used to. The secondary reason for that, over the last year is that commodity costs were high .

Q: Tell me about your Biscuit Hole initiative.

A variety of names have been floating around in our restaurants unofficially for some time now. It wasn’t unusual to go to a restaurant and find the crew was using biscuit dough to make and fry these themselves. They were popular with the crew, so we tested them under various names, but they never sold very well.

We thought we would revisit the idea again because we could never find exactly the right name for the products. We went out and researched the name options among our customer base, and biscuit holes emerged the clear winner. But when we briefed our advertising agency on the process, they thought that was a great ad idea to say were were challenged to name them. So we hired an interviewer who went on the street and asked them what they thought the name should be. That became the basis for the ad campaign: “nameourholes.com.” The product was already introduced, but we knew people would think it was a fun way to engage and interact with the brand.

Q: What’s your company’s view of sampling or “freebies” to introduce a new product?

A: We think sampling makes sense in the right context. If it’s a very unusual product – a small product that’s easy to sample operationally – we will develop sampling programs for new products specifically. When people do a free food offering of something that’s been around for a number of years, it’s hard to see strategic value, like you’re just trying to prop up sales. The strategic benefit is to get people to try a new item and want to come back again. We’ll do sampling on many, but not all, of our new products. Like a new shake or biscuit holes, or side item–they tend to lend themselves to sampling. We will do coupons online, but we tend to do lower value offers (vs. higher value) to avoid online fraud.

Q: Tell me about value menus.

A: Neither brand has a value menu, and have no intention of introducing one. Both brands are positioned on premium quality – black angus beef – we make shakes from scratch – skin on fries, chicken breast filets. Our goal in a nutshell is to bring casual dining food quality to fast food consumers. If you offer cheap cheap 99-cent value fare, this is inconsistent with the quality positioning and erodes margins.

Hardee’s also gave me a bunch of information on their social media activities (part of my interview, but not covered above):
http://www.facebook.com/hardees
http://www.twitter.com/hardees
http://www.flickr.com/hardees
http://www.frenchdiptour.com
http://www.facebook.com/jennapet?ref=profile#/pages/Hardees-French-Me-Tour/100511653958?ref=ts
http://www.twitter.com/frenchdipmaids
http://www.youtube.com/hardee’s