Red Rooster’s new chief to lean on innovation funnel to win next-gen diners

Red Rooster has 321 restaurants, according to a tracker published by GapMaps.

Samantha Bragg, the new CEO of Red Rooster, plans to lean on the brand’s ‘innovation funnel’ by launching bold limited-time offers—like Vanilla Slice Bites and the Chickmas Burger—to attract a new generation of customers.

​Before joining Red Rooster, Samantha Bragg served as CEO of Oporto, where she led the brand to a milestone of 200 restaurants by maintaining a balanced portfolio of food courts, shop fronts, and drive-thrus. Her strategic focus on accessibility and customer-centric growth contributed significantly to Oporto's expansion

In this quick Q&A with QSR Media, Bragg shares her strategy and vision for the brand’s future.

What attracted you to the role?

Samantha Bragg: I’ve worked on Australian bred brands historically, and what I love is the challenge of transformation and ensuring brands remain relevant and engaging to consumers.

Like many brands I’ve worked with, Red Rooster is an iconic brand that has been around since the 1970s and has been loved by generations of Australians for its unashamedly good chicken and ability to bring people together around the dinner table. I see continued transformational growth for the brand and look forward to realising this for the benefit of a new generation of customers but, most importantly, for our franchisees.

How has your experience at Oporto shaped your leadership style and decision-making?

My experience at Oporto has given me the necessary skills in QSR to move fast and make fast decisions while also understanding the nuances of the category.

Red Rooster and Oporto are two distinct brands with two distinct propositions. They each appeal to different consumer audiences and, because of this, they have unique strategic agendas underpinning their growth. However, they are both in a position to leverage the scale of Craveable Brands for the benefit of their franchisees.

What does NOT change is my leadership style, which is authentic to who I am as a person. It’s important to me that I take the time to spend with our franchisees to clearly understand what’s important to them along with the challenges and opportunities that they see, while bringing my creative and strategic thinking to the table to provide a vision and direction for Red Rooster that everyone feels aligned to and a part of.

How do you plan to differentiate Red Rooster?

Red Rooster has a unmistakable and exclusive DNA that has customers place it in a unique market position where it can lean into the mainstream QSR players for market share across fun, filling and indulgent offerings whilst continuing to appeal to customers who seek a more permissible menu offering.

There are several areas that I see as important and indeed building blocks to our position today:

• Opening up the innovation funnel to attract a new generation of customers to the brand but importantly making sure that the innovation has impact where it will count the most.
• Transforming the CX through the power of data and technology while likewise investing in the crew who serve our customers every day.
• Dial up our emotive value exchange with our customers. 

Some might call this acting like a challenger brand, however, I like to look at it from the lens of the consumer. They are bombarded with messages all day, and there are lots of options/deals that they can choose from. It will be important for some customers that we play in this space, particularly when it comes to e-commerce and being on their app roster. Still, it’s also important that as a brand, we stand out, and for Red Rooster, this will mean that we need to not only need to be distinct but also need to be memorable. Either seek to entertain or excite as well as build a stronger connection with our customers.

What are your key focus?

We are all facing a market that has contracted and has seen transactions strained for some time. The joy of QSR is that it is on a consumer’s level, and it is at its best when it sticks to what it’s known for—Fast, Fun and Filling.  

Whilst there is a lot of competition, the market is certainly not saturated, and consumers love hearing from brands in this category. Success for Reds will come through making ourselves memorable through menu fame, our CX, and by winning in culture. Tech but, more importantly, data will play a major role—we need to invest in technology as availability and perceived availability is a significant frequency driver, and data and technology have a huge role to play given the importance of proximity to a customer’s purchase decision along with their continued mobility.

Importantly, I need to ensure that I am focused on driving the same store profitable growth for our franchise partners. This is vital.

As CEO, my priorities will be driving continued profitable growth for our franchise partners. As I mentioned before, we plan to open an 'innovation funnel' to attract a new generation of customers to the brand but importantly making sure that the said innovation has impact where it will count the most. 

We have launched some great LTO’s over the last 6 months that have seen strong transaction performance, such as Vanilla Slice Bites and our Chickmas Burger, and this is sure to continue

We also plan to transform the CX through the power of data and technology whilst also investing in the crew who serve our customers every day. We continue to roll out new technology such as self-service kiosks and expand our loyalty proposition and e-commerce offer.

We are also dialing up our emotive value exchange with our customers and start to entertain and delight them as we bring our brand proposition to life and introduce Red Rooster to a new generation of customers