Organizations and Major Activities

Brand Audit

Hunter Hock

December 17, 2013

Company

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  Location: The corporate Headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia. There are now over 1700+ locations in thirty-nine different States. The first Chick-fil-A was opened in a mall in 1967.
  
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  Organizations and Major Activities: Chick-fil-A came up with the Win-Shape Foundation, which is a Non-Profit organization established to help shape winners. They are also apart of many other programs such as, The Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, Chick-fil-A Bowl game and as well as the Chick fil-A Bowl challenge which is a sponsorship charity.
  
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  Subsidiaries: N/A
  
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  Brand History: Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A opened a Dwarf Grill in Atlanta, Georgia in 1946, which later got renamed to the Dwarf House. In 1963 Truett Cathy invents the original Chicken Sandwich. The first Chick-fil-A opened in 1967 in the Greenbriar Mall in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1982 Chick-fil-A moved its corporate headquarters to Atlanta. Chick-fil-A then started to expand and made their way into their first college campus with branding license agreements. In 1993 the 500^th Chick-fil-A opened up in the United States. Their Famous cow campaign “Eat Mor Chikin” airs in 1995 on billboards for advertisement. In 2001 Chick-fil-A opened its 1000^th Restaurant. In 2003 Chick-fil-A began to grow rapidly and moved into the Western United States.
  

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  Financial Data: Since Chick-fil-A is a privately owned company I nor the public has access to the 10-K report and financial data.
  

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  Key Personnel:
  

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  Recent News: Since Chick-fil-A is a privately owned company there is no stock news. The most recent news was in 2012 reporting that Chick-fil-A pledged to stop giving money to the anti-gay organizations after his controversial comments regarding gay marriage. This was a big topic at the time but did not really have long term affects about the way people felt regarding Chick-fil-A. *Found from www.usatoday.com
  

Category

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  Category Definition: Chick-fil-A is in the category of the food industry. Chick-fil-A offers a place for people to go in sit down and eat, or the “grab-n-go” style where you can just go through the drive-thru if you are in a hurry. The food industry complex, global collective diverse businesses that supply much of the food energy consumed in the world population. (1.)
  
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  Size of Category: **
  

*Graph found from www.restaurantnews.com

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  Major Players: McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Popeyes, Churches, Wendy’s, Raising Canes, Boston Market, Golden Chick and Chicken Express
  
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  Category History and Growth Projection: While Chick-fil-A is privately owned and in just located in the United States; I believe there is a huge opportunity to go internationally with this company. As we have seen KFC go international they have targeted and successfully pulled in their customers. KFC puts up restaurants in the most odd places and gets sales like you would never imagine from these places. If Chick-fil-A puts up restaurants outsides of the United States there is a big opportunity for them to compete with other top fast food restaurants. If they do expand they could maybe look at optional food ingredients, such as a spicier type of ingredient to add to the chicken if they expanded into Mexico. As you can see from the graph below, Chick-fil-A got voted number one chicken restaurant across the United States. If they can do it in the United States why not internationally?
  

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  Methods of Distribution: In 2000 Chick-fil-A switched distribution services from Ameriserve Food Distribution to a service called MBM, which provides their chicken, waffle fries, paper products, condiments, eggs, deserts, and cleaning supplies. Alliant Food Distributors provide all of their produce.
  

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  Seasonal Factors: Chick-fil-A has many seasonal factors. Some of these would include: During the winter they offer a tortilla soup and a Peppermint milkshake and during the springtime they offer a Peach milkshake. In the fall it changes every year. This year it’s a Mocha milkshake. They also offer their calendars during the Christmas holidays. The calendars change each year and include coupons that can be used throughout the coming year. Some locations offer various cards that are given to customers that offer a free product once a month for thee months.
  

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  Regional Factors: The food industry is very competitive. Restaurants compete to give the best deals, prices, tastes and atmosphere to offer to customers. There is a very low to no barrier to entry, but you also have to watch where you place your restaurants. The reason for that is because the bigger and stronger the company the better chance they have to take over the market share in that area. Chick fil-A in my opinion has a very strong awareness in the market and is highly picked over many of its competitors. The only place it lacks in the United States from the graph above is in the North. I believe that they don’t place restaurants in that area because there are very sparse areas of housing there and too much space for them to pin point an exact location to put a Chick-fil-A.
  
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  Legal Considerations: N/A
  
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  Major Trade Publications: N/A
  

Products Within The Category

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  Share of Category by Product: N/A
  
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  Product from Description: Chick-fil-A sells food (Chicken), salads, wraps, soups, breakfast items, and offers deserts and milkshakes. They also offer catering trays including, chicken nuggets, chicken strips, desert trays and fruit trays.
  
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  New Product Introductions: Chick-fil-A recently refreshed their menu with new premium salads and wraps. Their new salads consisted of the Chick-fil-A Cobb Salad, Chick-fil-A Asian Salad and the Chick-fil-A Grilled Market Salad, as well as the new Grilled Chicken Wrap. This will expand their menu to customers that want a variety of salad that will include their popular chicken. Chick-fil-A is also making many changes to their salad dressing options. The new Zesty Apple Cider Vinaigrette, Avocado Lime Ranch and Honey Sesame that goes with the new salads. (The new products were released in April of 2013)
  

* Picture of one of the new salads, the Asian salad

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  Benefits and Appeals of New Products: Peoples taste and preferences are changing so often. Chick-fil-A wants to stay ahead of the game by offering these new products (as listed above). Chick-fil-A is rivaling restaurants with these new salads and are trying to compete with the top restaurants and its competitors. “These salads feature more unique ingredients and are paired with the specialty dressings.” Another person said “Our new salads have completely different flavor profiles- tastes that are less commonly found in fast food”
  

*Quotes from www.chick-fil-a.com

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  Innovations Throughout the Years: Chick-fil-A has come up with many innovative concepts since the first day they opened. Some of these concepts include-
  
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    Mall/Restaurants
    
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    Stand alone restaurants
    
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    Drive-thru
    
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    Licensed non-traditional outlets
    
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    Truett’s Grill
    
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    Dwarf House
    
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  Recent News about Product Category: N/A
  
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  New Packages: N/A
  

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  Demographic of Users: Chick-fil-A caters to all genders and ages. It offers a type of food for everyone, whether it’s a kid size portion or an adult portion. They are targeting all audiences because the prices are affordable to most everyone. Their biggest sales revenue comes from the lunch time hours.
  
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  Frequency of Purchase/Usage: Frequency differs greatly from what type of person you are. Heavy “out to eat” people tend to eat out more and would go to chick-fil-A, rather than the low users who usually don’t eat out that much. Their busiest time of the year is usually the later months such as October, November and December.
  

*Chick-fil-A lunchtime crowd

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  Place of Purchase: Inside or Drive-Thru and catering
  
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  Heavy User Profile- All Ages and types
  
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  Awareness and Attitude Toward the Brand: Overall, the awareness of Chick-fil-A is amazing and would be hard to improve on. Many, if not most all people that have a Chick-fil-A near them or in their location knows about them and even their cow campaign. The attitude and loyalty to the brand still stands very strong. If you are a fan of Chick-fil-A then you will like it and will continue to like it. In my opinion Chick-fil-A is a black and white scenario, you either like it or you don’t, there is no in between.
  
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  Decision Maker vs. Purchaser: On average the decision maker and purchaser could be the man or woman.
  
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  Normal Purchase Cycle: The purchase cycles all year around because it’s a restaurant and food is essential to life. The heavy users may go more than once a week. The busiest time is around October, November and December.
  
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  Brand Loyalty and Switching: Those who are loyal to Chick-fil-A and are dedicated to them will usually eat there instead of their competitors, such as, Churches, Canes, Popeye’s, Boston Market, etc. Plus Chick-fil-A offers a more healthy option. The reason for switching is because the customer may have already eaten at Chick-fil-A that week and wants to eat somewhere else so they don’t get burned out on it.
  

Advertising/Marketing Communications

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  Creative Strategies of Top Brands: Chick-fil-A has done a very good job of coming up with creative strategies. “Eat Mor Chikin” is a top advertising slogan that is known throughout the United States. Chick-fil-A doesn’t offer that many commercials though. I feel like if they offered a commercial about National Cow Appreciation day they would build that much more awareness about the brand. I think what people notice the most is the billboards on the side of the road that advertise Chick-fil-A, with the cows hanging onto one another. As far as their competitors go, such as Golden Chick, Raising Canes, and Popeye’s; Chick-fil-A is far ahead of them. I don’t really see any advertising outside of commercials for any of these brands. Their competitors seem to focus more on a cheaper price and not so much the quality of the food that Chick-fil-A offers. Chick-fil-A offers both quality and a better price, which makes it that much better!
  

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  Special Promises: N/A
  
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  Examples of Past and Current Executions: See Pictures
  

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  Category and Brand Spending: Refer to Annual Report
  
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  Seasonality: All seasons
  
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  Regions: All Regions, but there are less Chick-fil-A’s up North which is a good opportunity to move to. They are also not international so that opens up a whole new playing field.
  
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  Media Employed by Top Brands: Tv commercials, signs and bill boards and social media
  

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  Spending Patterns: Continuous
  
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  Spending Compared with Market Share: N/A
  
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  Success Rate with Promotions: The promotions that Chick-fil-A offers have been very successful, the biggest one of Cow Appreciation day. If you come in dressed up as a cow you get free chicken. This also brings awareness to the brand.
  

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  Promotions used in Category:
  
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    Cow Appreciation Day
    
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    Dad-Daughter Night
    
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    Coupons for free sandwiches on their receipts
    
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    Gift Cards
    
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    VIP in trying new items going to be released on the menu
    

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  Major Brand Promotion Types and Examples: Listed above
  

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  Website and its Purpose: Chick-fil-A has a very detailed website and offers a lot of information throughout it. The website helped me immensely with my project as well. They also give all the information needed about Chick-fil-A and advertise the deals and promotions going on that day/week. Chick-fil-A really could not improve their website any more because its that easy to navigate and has every bit of information needed.
  
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  Ecommerce Activities: N/A
  
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  Social Media Activities: Chick-fil-A uses social media to post what is going on in the Chick-fil-A community. They use it to share deals, promotions, and any activities going on in the community that Chick-fil-A maybe sponsoring or apart of.
  

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  Picture of Chick-fil-A: Eat Mor Chikin
  

*Chick-fil-A slogan and what they are known for

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  Focus Group: I took a survey of asking people two questions
  
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    What is Chick-fil-A’s slogan? Out of the 10 people I surveyed I got a 100% response that they were aware of what the slogan was.
    
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    Do you like Chick-fil-A and do you eat it more than twice a month? They all said they like Chick-fil-A and eat it more than twice a month.
    
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  Personal Interview with a Manager:
  
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    What’s the busiest time of the season? It would have to be October, November and December.
    
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    Was it hard to go through the selection process to be a franchise owner? It wasn’t hard but it was very challenging and stressful. You really have to have your stuff together, and be able to manage your own personal finances.
    
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    Do you think you would do more business if you were open on Sunday? Yes we would, I would never want to be open on Sunday though, it doesn’t outweigh the cost of not being able to be with your family.
    
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    Does being in the food industry make it hard to keep long term employees and managers? Yes it does.
    

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  Through doing this Brand Audit, I found that Chick-Fil-A is one of the most favorite restaurants among its competitors. Chick-fil-a continues to have consistent sales because of the awareness and brand loyalty people have to Chick-Fil-A. They offer many types of promotions listed above that make it more of a fun atmosphere compared to its competitors. Who doesn’t want to dress up as a cow and get free chicken?
  
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  They keep loyal customers due to the cleanliness, quickness, good tasting and fast service they have to offer and people like that. If they mess up an order they fix it and throw in an incentive, such as a free chicken sandwich or a free chicken biscuit for next visit.
  
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  It seems they use their money wisely and effectively for marketing, especially with their cow campaign slogan. I think they could do a better job though on marketing through TV commercials because I feel like they don’t have enough of that.
  
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  They have a huge and prospering opportunity if they go internationally. They are already on the top in fast-food quality here in the United States. If they go international they open up to a whole new playing field and would boom in business. Though this would be hard to do because it’s a privately owned business. I feel like they first need to use their strategic placing and place Chick-fil-A up in the northern states.
  

1. 
   www.chick-fil-a.com
   
2. 
   www.huffingtonpost.com
   
3. 
   www.restaurantnews.com
   
4. 
   www.usatoday.com
   
5. 
   www.marketingland.com