What were the top five accomplishments for Popeyes in 2004?

First and foremost was the addition of incremental resources in the field to support field operations and franchisee businesses. We increased our field-based operations and marketing resources by approximately 200 percent and moved to a decentralized organization with three regions. Our team members now live in the markets they serve, which has improved communication between the franchisees and the support team. Second, we returned to marketing that highlights our food and our flavor — the things our customers told us were important. This shift, in my opinion, was a major factor in the positive results we garnered the last half of the year. Third, the brand made major reductions in development costs. Initial efforts led to a cost reduction in new units of approximately $100,000 depending upon the building type, and a reduction in the average cost to re-image a unit of 21 percent to 36 percent. Fourth, we added new senior leadership in both franchise and company operations, a vice president of menu development, a new chief development officer, and a new chief marketing officer. And lastly, and maybe most important of all, we aligned the entire service center team around the initiatives that are most important to the company and our franchisees. This transformation continues to be a work in progress, but we have already seen a tremendous acceleration in the ability to work together as a single, unified organization.

Do you believe Popeyes can compete in the QSR arena better than its counterparts?

Definitely. We have a highly definable and distinctive brand position. Our customers truly believe that our New Orleans heritage makes our food better. It provides us better credibility around our flavor and taste and the products that we serve. We have something meaningful that customers recognize, we own it, and it creates a distinctive positioning. This becomes a major advantage when we tell customers why we are superior to other brands in the larger QSR arena — not just chicken QSRs.


What are you doing to leverage the uniqueness of the Popeyes brand?

We have to be mindful that we have been given a gift by our customers — the credibility around our New Orleans heritage. We have to be very clear as we talk to customers that we value that heritage as much as they do. Through our marketing and in-store communications, we must make sure that we are using that message as an underlying theme for everything we do. Just as important, however, is the operational element. When you think of the New Orleans heritage around the food, there is also a “southern genteelness” that has to do with the quality of the customer interaction. We have to be able to execute that interaction every time a customer walks through the door of a Popeyes restaurant.