The Need For a Hero: Slim Chickens Launches Premium Chicken Breast Sandwich to Satisfy Customer Cravings

From McDonald’s Big Mac to Checkers*/Rally’s famous seasoned fries to Toppers Pizza*’s Topperstix, for many brands their recognition in customer’s minds is tied to one signature dish. When examining its menu offerings, Arkansas-based ‘better chicken’ brand Slim Chickens noticed its menu was missing a hero product of its own. The brand answered the call for a menu centerpiece with the recently launched Cayenne Ranch Chicken Sandwich.

“When it comes to Slim Chickens’ product development, we stay true to our core principle of being ‘Southern at Heart,’” said Slim Chickens chief operating officer Sam Rothschild. “We are always looking for ways to improve the customer experience and identified a gap in our menu. This premium chicken breast sandwich will fill that gap.”

The launch of the Cayenne Ranch Chicken Sandwich is the culmination of months of testing different iterations of the dish. Different attributes of the sandwich were rated on a 10-point scale in thousands of surveys over two months in test markets at corporate-owned locations in Oklahoma and Arkansas. A financial analyst studied both anecdotal and quantifiable data surrounding customers’ reactions leading up to the product’s official unveiling. In test markets, the brand’s fanatical following has already shown this new menu staple is worthy of the “Hero Product” title. When launching a new product, Slim Chickens uses this 10-point rating scale in a variety of categories to gauge consumer’s reaction to factors like taste, presentation and price. Number of orders and customers’ desire to purchase the dish again were also weighed. Any menu item that Slim Chickens tests which scores under an 8.0 average on the 10-point scale is reworked. However, the Cayenne Ranch Chicken Sandwich was a huge hit with hungry Slim Chickens fans, scoring above the 8.0 benchmark off the bat.

The final product: a delicious combination of fresh cooked chicken breast loaded with a spicy cayenne ranch dressing, savory southern style onion strips and classic fixings like lettuce and pickles sure to become the menu mainstay Slim Chickens has sought.

Slim Chickens rolled out this new product at all of its 37 nationwide locations on September 6, 2016. To promote the launch of this new signature item, stores were kitted out with a variety of marketing materials, including interior and exterior signage, promotional point of purchase materials and a rotating photo on the menu board. In addition, Slim Chickens tapped into its extensive social network with a social media campaign geo-targeted to a surrounding area of several miles of each restaurant.

“Keeping our core customers coming back is integral to the success of the brand,” said Rothschild. “We want to give them new news to keep them excited about what we’re doing. That doesn’t mean constantly introducing new gimmicks, but it does mean regularly improving upon the menu they already love to give them something new to try.”  

The Cayenne Ranch Chicken Sandwich launch comes at a time of exciting growth for Slim Chickens. The brand has opened nine new restaurants so far in 2016, with another 15 planned to open before the end of the year. Slim Chickens opened its first location in Arizona in September 2016 and signed development deals in several new states including South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa. The brand has upcoming openings in North Texas, Missouri and Illinois.