Restaurant Marketing No Place For Chickens

Hurricane Grill & Wings CMO Derek Kirk has a full plate: brand expansion, social targeting, driving loyalty, and integrating technology to drive differentiation. Read on for the tasty details.

Already tasked with marketing one of the fastest-growing franchises in the country, Hurricane Grill & Wings CMO Derek Kirk and his team are now responsible for creating buzz about the launch of the fast-casual concept, Hurricane BTW. The work involved represents a mash-up of two of Kirk’s favorite things: marketing and driving innovation.

A 15-year vet of the restaurant industry, Kirk has spent time at both Darden Restaurants’ Olive Garden and Smokey Bones brands; he also was VP of marketing for Chevys Fresh Mex.

Kirk joined Hurricane Grill & Wings as its CMO in 2013, and is responsible for building the restaurant’s brand, driving customer loyalty, and producing compelling and effective national programs that appeal to all generations. CMO.com spoke to him about what that entails.

CMO.com: Hurricane Grill & Wings boasts 72 locations in 16 states. What is the key is to creating a marketing strategy that covers all of your locations but also gets the right message out locally for each area?

Kirk: It’s part of a larger process, and the process starts with identifying our goals and objectives. The foundation of our process is consumer insights … driven by a broad and deep understanding of the brand in the marketplace. We ask questions, such as: What are the motivations? What are the brand characteristics, the attributes? What are the benefits of the brand, both emotional and functional? After taking in all that knowledge, we move on to identifying, establishing, and validating a brand positioning that is unique in the marketplace. In this business, it has got to be emotionally compelling while addressing the points of parity and the points of differentiation.

By collecting these insights, we are able to develop a marketing mix of programs and positioning that drives product development, the design of our restaurants, and all of the touch points within our four walls. Finally, all of these items drive our ultimate communication and creative strategy.

CMO.com: You recently had a franchise opening in Italy. You don’t often think of wings and Italian food together.

Kirk: Typically, you do not. We were attending a conference out in Vegas and a group approached us and said, “You know what, this concept would really work for us.” We found out they were from Italy. They came in for what we term a “discovery day” and came to find out they were one of the most successful and largest operators of American-themed restaurants in Europe. They opened during the fourth quarter of last year, and they have done tremendously. They are looking at opening additional restaurants on the continent. Some of the traditional American favorites, like beer and hamburgers, do exceptionally well there.

CMO.com: So is international a big area of focus for the brand?

Kirk: It is a smaller area of focus. Our primary focus right now is expanding the current footprint of the Hurricane Grill brand, and then we’re starting up our first fast-casual concept [Hurricane BTW]. Our first location, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., [opened in April], and we’ve got a pretty unique approach to that. We’re using the lean startup methodology where we have a hypothesis that there’s an opportunity in the marketplace for a fast-casual brand that has little bit broader menu than you see in a lot of other fast-casual concepts. We can offer quality food that’s executed very quickly at an extremely attractive price point.

CMO.com: What is the initial marketing plan for Hurricane BTW? What’s out there to inform people about this concept?

Kirk: We actually are still in that startup phase right now. There’s a lot of great traction, but we’re learning about our guests and how they interact. We’re going to really launch this product in the coming months, and we’re not going to use the traditional methodology because we’re finding this brand is appealing to a much younger demographic. For instance, we’re not going to be emailing to customers. … Instead, as it relates to marketing, we’re obviously going to be utilizing a lot of social media—specifically Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat—and direct mail. It’s a pretty broad approach and, like I said, we’re going to be testing a lot of things and seeing what works as well as seeing what doesn’t work.

CMO.com: What’s the secret to standing out in a crowded fast-serve restaurant environment?

Kirk: The restaurant environment is tough. It’s extremely competitive, and I think the one thing you have to understand is at the end of the day, it is a discretionary expense to the consumer. There are a myriad of options at different price points above and below us along the culinary spectrum. So, within casual dining, it’s all about that social reconnection. People utilize the casual-dining functionally, “Yeah, I’m hungry. I want something to drink,” but, more importantly, it’s about reconnecting with family, friends, escaping the everyday life, and rejuvenation. That’s at the core of it. So, because of the competition, you have to be value-conscious; as a result, we have attractive price points, LTOs [limited-time offers], messages, discounts, and coupon offers.

But it’s also a balance because the business model over a longer period of time is negatively impacted by all of these short-term offers. A lot of consumers are addicted to those discounts. You have to be very prudent and strategic in terms of when you’re offering. For us it’s about keeping the brand top of mind, it’s about delivering new product news, and it’s about flavors. Our primary product is wings, and we think about wings as sort of this blank canvas, if you will. We then encourage our guests to paint them with this wide spectrum of flavors, including sweet, savory, and 30 other flavors.

CMO.com: How important is a strong loyalty program, and what is your role and your team’s role in working with that?

Kirk: It’s very important. We segment and look at the business in terms of driving sales into three big buckets. The first one is the check or [per person average], or the amount per guest that they spend in the restaurant. And that’s almost like the third rail in this business because, like I mentioned earlier, there’s so much competition out there.

The second one is just general awareness: inviting new individuals into the franchise, keeping top of mind with our current guests. The last one is loyalty. We spend a significant amount of time focusing on motivating those guests who are loyal to the brand to come in one more time, two more times, three more times in the year.

We have a very robust email program for those individuals who have raised their hands and communicated that they want Hurricane to communicate with them. On average, we send them some type of message or offer at least once a week. And then we have a traditional loyalty program where individuals accrue rewards and points based on their spending activity within the restaurant. It’s a very successful program for us. It’s been in existence for about four years. We’re constantly managing it, looking for ways to improve it, ways to customize offers to guests based upon their specific behavior as opposed to sort of this broad messaging.

CMO.com: Can you talk a little bit about a current marketing campaign?

Kirk: About four times a year we do an LTO product. Our summer LTO is called Summer Sunsations. On that menu, our guests will find a new product called Beach BBQ Burger. In addition, we’ve got a new Steakhouse Burger and two new summertime salads. Finally, we always have an LTO sauce called Island Heat Wave, which is a spicy jalapeno. While we typically don’t play in that spicy area, but this summer we are testing it out.

CMO.com: You’ve had some innovations with using technology at the restaurants. Can you detail some of the way it has helped in ordering?

Kirk: Technology is a key component for us. It’s a vehicle that we feel truly drives differentiation. We’re trying to make our ordering process as frictionless as possible for the consumer and, as a result, give them numerous options. [For example], you can walk in and stand in line in a traditional fast-casual model. We’re also putting a kiosk right when you walk in, so if you just want to order right there and pay—it has credit-card integration—you can do that, and then hang out in the little television viewing area and wait for your food to be delivered in a few minutes. Finally, we have a great partnership with Delivery Dudes in numerous restaurants for convenience.

CMO.com: You spoke a little about your social media approach. How else are you using digital to get your message across?

Kirk: What we have found unequivocally for this brand is social media, and, specifically, Facebook, works best for us. Our guest profile for the Hurricane Grill & Wings is adults 25 to 54. We find that they’re highly engaged with Facebook. The targeting capability of that platform, when we measure the return on investment, towers above anything else that we’ve tested. I’ve got a great team here at Hurricane, who keeps me abreast of all the new things. We’ve also been working with Instagram over the last year.

One of the things that we are building as a foundation for BTW is integrating technology in all of the touch points for our guests. The first thing we’re doing is partnering with a company called Olo, which is the premier provider of online ordering within the restaurant industry. They’re building out our online ordering infrastructure. We think that’s going to be takeout, online ordering, and delivery.

CMO.com: How do you see the company continuing to evolve over the next five years? What will be your role will be in helping that evolution?

Kirk: It’s all about growth. We are going to be growing in terms of the number of restaurants and in terms of the growth in sales. We are going to be growing the BTW brand, specifically. We currently have about 10 franchisees who are interested in taking advantage of this concept. They like the lower costs, simple menu, and smaller store footprint. The goal is to open 100 of these over the next 24 plus months. So we think that’s going to be a big driver for us. It does not mean that we’re taking the eye off our core focus, which is still on the Hurricane brand.