Celebrity Chef Endorsements: What will Sumo's alliance with Pete Evans do for their business?

Sumo Salad recently announced their collaboration with celebrity chef Pete Evans. This interview with both Pete & Luke touches on the rationale behind the move, what their expectation is for the range and how the industry is changing.

QSR Media: How will you be launching and promoting the "say no to fried food and lardy lunches"?
Luke: “Say No to fried food & lardy lunches” will be promoted in all Australian SumoSalad stores.

QSR Media: In store, how will they customers know it is a "Pete Evans" salad?
Luke: It will be quite easy for customers to identify which salads have been designed by Chef Pete Evans. For Pete’s two salads in our favourites range these will be promoted on every stores menu panels across the country. For Pete’s four fast deli salads, we’ve designed specific product tickets for this range for easy customer identification.

QSR Media: How long is the collaboration with Pete Evans planned for?
Luke: SumoSalad will be partnering with Pete Evans for sometime at least a couple of years. We’ve got a lot to teach our customers about healthy eating during this time and we’re excited about the partnership.

QSR Media: What is your expectation of the range, from a sales point of view?
Luke: We’ve spent a lot of time with Pete developing the 6 new salads in his range and we’ve introduced different ingredients and super foods such as miso, quinoa, barley, soy beans, pickled ginger to really take Pete’s range to the next level for our customers.
 Whilst we are expecting a sales increase due to our partnership with Pete, we’re more excited about working together on educating Aussies on the benefits of eating healthy and nutritious meals every lunchtime.

QSR Media: Why collaborate with Sumo?
Pete: Im pretty healthy and I don't like to put too much fat,salt or processed food into my diet so for me Sumo was the perfect fit.I really was excited to be approached by Sumo as healthy eating is something I'm passionate about. People are so busy these days especially at lunch time so we have come up with 6 healthy salads which combine super foods with healthy flavours to give people a healthy alternate at lunch time.

QSR Media: Do you think there will be more "celebrity chef" collaborations with quick serves in the future?
Pete: I hope so if it means people have more choice and if it means healthy eating becomes the new fast food, I have just been in New York and they have a huge array of Fast healthy food shops juice bars and the like. I believe its the way we are heading 

QSR Media: The QSR environment has unique challenges in terms of menu innovation, what did you find the most challenging aspect?
Pete: It was challenging at first as a retail chain has more limitations that a restaurant environment.For example certain ingredients like broccoli had some limitations which we got around substituting other great vegetables like edamame. 

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Tags: Sumo Salad, Pete Evans, celebrity chef endorsements