Red Rooster, Bakers Delight stick to core products, community involvement to retain customer attention
The chains also explain the value in shifting their focus across digital, social media and television channels.
Sticking to promoting their core products and detailing community involvement are just some of the key messages Red Rooster and Bakers Delight integrated in their customer engagement strategies, the chain’s marketing leaders reveal to QSR Media.
Boasting a “strong” in-house delivery service along with partnerships with aggregators, Red Rooster continues its push to promote its Buttermilk Chicken Pops campaign, which started last April, along with the return of their $5 Sub Lunch deal.
“During this time, we’ve especially focused on supporting our core products like Buttermilk Chicken Pops and [its] availability in both delivery and our 283 drive-thrus around the country. Our famous Roast Chicken has also been a key focus in our communications as the perfect solution for when people are searching for a little bit of extra comfort that they can rely on,” Red Rooster marketing manager Lucy Frizell said.
Comfort is also a key word for Bakers Delight, whose ongoing “Toast the Toasties” campaign focuses on toasted sandwiches as an “easy to make, on trend comfort food” that can be made with any of the chain’s loaves and pantry staples.
“People are at home more often and looking for simple, tasty at home meal solutions. After the Toasties campaign, we are focusing on our pizza bases, once again leveraging on current trends to eat at-home restaurants or take away meals,” Bakers Delight group marketing manager Jodi Murray-Freedman explained.
The bakery chain also said it fast tracked its shift towards online ordering and is on its way to building an e-commerce website, encompassing click and collect, delivery, fundraising amongst others.
“We had a number of bakeries already active on Uber Eats, however when the pandemic hit we decided to expedite the process and really drive our network to sign up to the delivery platform. We also invested in a click and collect product called Tolo which was integrated into our POS system. We are currently piloting this with a number of bakeries.” Murray-Freedman added.
Multi-channel exposure, communicating their COVID-19 response
Aside from maximising its delivery reach, both chains found it important to utilise various channels to not only reach more people but as well as to properly communicate to customers how they are specifically responding to the pandemic.
“We found we needed to shift our messaging from campaign and product posts to include more updates around the changing in-bakery requirements, such as social distancing whilst reminding people we are an essential business and still open for business,” Murray-Freedman noted.
“Early on, we shifted to dial up support across digital, social and television in order to reach people in their new bubbles of isolation. We’ve just signed on as the official Foxtel naming partner for Thursday Night NRL, which is super exciting and an amazing opportunity for our brand,” Frizell remarked.
“We’ve also consciously taken this time to further increase our community involvement [with] our official charity partnership with Foodbank and our #donateadinner initiative,” she added, noting that they jumped on board as the first major corporate partner supporting Alex Makes Meals feeding medical frontliners.
Red Rooster’s franchisees also assisted with tens of thousands of free meals delivered nationally to hundreds of hospitals, schools, clinics and aged care centres.
Whilst its food court stores have taken a significant hit during this time, Craveable Brands-owned chain stressed its focus to build the brand for long-term growth.
“We will continue to support our restaurants as the country opens back up and more people get out and about, nothing has changed there,” Frizell said.
Bakers Delight echoed this sentiment, thankful that they have been able to trade throughout the crisis.
“Our focus isn’t so much on store recovery, it's more focused on setting our business model up for the future growth and therefore we are allocating funds to new channels such as online ordering,” Murray-Freedman added.
