Chicken Salad Chick is one of the fastest-growing fast-casual chains around.
Last year, the Atlanta-based brand opened 30 new restaurants, a 17% increase year-over-year in units, and reported $255 million in sales, a 46% jump from the prior year. And average unit volumes are just over $1.3 million, a record for the brand that, like Chick-fil-A, is closed on Sundays.
But there’s one big area in which the 200-unit chain is not out-pacing its fast-casual peers:
Digital sales.
Today, digital channels make up just about 15% of Chicken Salad Chick’s total sales, CEO Scott Deviney said, noting that number was zero just two years ago. Third-party delivery through UberEats and DoorDash launched last year and grew to 7% of the chain’s total monthly system sales by the end of December.
“It’ll continue to grow,” Deviney said. “(Digital) is the fastest-growing segment for us, for sure.”
But a lot of Chicken Salad Chick’s customers simply prefer to dine in. The chain currently has restaurants in 17 states, largely in the southeastern U.S.
Deviney visited one of his chain’s locations recently and chatted with a table of diners who’d been there for more than two hours, eating their chicken sandwiches and chatting.
“We still have full dining rooms,” he said. “Our dining rooms are very warm and inviting. That’s still part of our DNA.”
Even as other restaurants shrink their footprints or do away with dining rooms altogether, the chain’s locations will remain 2,600- to 2,800-square-feet, he said, with dining rooms with about 70 seats.
He said he could eventually see digital orders making up 20% to 25% of the chain’s sales.
But Chicken Salad Chick is taking a harder look at drive-thrus, which are currently present in about 45% of the brand’s locations. Deviney said three-quarters of the more than 50 new restaurants slated to open in 2022 will include a drive-thru.
“We want them in every store,” he said. “We obviously love them. But they’re so hard to get. We love ‘em when we can get ‘em. They’re in short supply and extremely high demand.”
Since Chicken Salad Chick restaurants don’t require fryers or grills, Deviney said he hasn’t seen a lot of construction slowdowns related to equipment delays. Local permitting, though, has slowed down some of the openings—10 locations that were supposed to open in 2021 were pushed to this year.
So far, the company has opened six new restaurants in 2022.
“We are still on pace, assuming no other major delays,” he said.
As Chicken Salad Chick expands into colder climates, it’s adjusting its menu a bit to suit those environments. The chain recently added a third soup as a winter LTO and it is testing a toasted croissant sandwich topped with melted cheese in a couple of restaurants.
One of the chain’s big successes has been what it dubs “Quick Chicks,” pre-packaged tubs of chicken salads in different flavors, sold in one-pound and half-pound containers.
The grab-and-go items are particularly popular at dinner and can be prepped in the mornings.
They now make up roughly 25% of Chicken Salad Chick’s sales, he said.
“It’s awesome,” Deviney said. “That’s what helps our average check more than at other fast casuals.”