Red Rooster's director of marketing Ashley Hughes has driven almost 50% business growth by shaking off outdated perceptions and introducing new fried chicken flavour ranges.
He joined in 2018 after six years at competitor KFC.
According to IBISWorld, Cravable brands, which runs Red Rooster, Oporto and Chicken Treat, is expanding through improved brand recognition and innovative menu items.
“The Red Rooster brand has undergone substantial changes, refurbishing nearly 100 ageing stores, rolling out a fleet of distinctive red delivery cars and launching Red Royalty,” the report said.
Hughes said the marketing team wants to ensure the brand is “top of mind” for consumers.
“A number of key but significant menu changes have resulted in new customers trialling the brand for the very first time,” he told AdNews.
“We have also seen the return of regulars and those customers that tried us a long time ago but needed that nudge to come back again.”
Red Rooster operates more than 360 restaurants which are run by local franchisees.
IBISWorld's data shows that Cravable Brands holds a 3.9% market share and is projected to generate approximately $978.4 million in revenue in 2025, significantly trailing its rival McDonald's, which holds a 22.5% market share and is expected to earn $5,705.4 million over the same period.
Hughes credits the introduction of flavoured fried chicken and a revamped burger range for helping scale the business by nearly 50% in recent years.
He also believes their roast chicken gives them a competitive edge over KFC and other takeaway chicken shops.
“There are the obvious big QSR players we are up against, but none provide roast chicken on a national scale, which is a key point of difference for us,” Hughes said.
“Our crunchy fried chicken and flavour ranges, Hot Honey and Reds Hot, are also unique and should give us a huge opportunity to grow into a new customer base and occasionality.”
The takeaway chicken shops industry is highly concentrated with both international and domestic brands.
However, the demand for chicken-based fast food has increased with people's perception that it is healthier, IBISWorld reported.
“The perceived healthiness of chicken products over other fattier meats has contributed to strengthening this segment’s revenue share over the past five years,” the report said.
“Several fast-food services have expanded their range of menu items to include chicken-based products, like grilled chicken, which is considered healthier than traditional alternatives like cheeseburgers.”
Hughes said Red Rooster's key marketing priorities for next year are to drive brand consideration and keep innovating new flavour offerings for their fried chicken.
He said the brand's small marketing team will continue to work with its agency partners - Leo Burnett, Atomic 212°, Hogarth, Dashing and Eight Clients - to execute its activities.
Hughes said Red Rooster has become more focused on e-commerce channels as the business has scaled to reflect customer preferences and broader trends in retail.
“We are at the start of our journey to understand the optimal media mix across messages and channels with a new MMM tool that we have been building with Mutinex,” he said.
“We can run tests which give us significantly enhanced and timely insights and make the corresponding changes to optimise performance."
Ongoing cost-of-living pressures and rising prices have not significantly impacted the QSR sector, according to Hughes.
He said consumer preferences at Red Rooster have remained largely the same with the exception of their new menu items.
“One area we expected to see a greater decline after the highest of the covid period was in delivery sales,” Hughes said.
“We expected more customers to move from delivery back to drive thru or instore pick up.”
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