Bojangles is a Carolina-born restaurant brand specializing in Southern food like hand-breaded fried chicken and made-from-scratch biscuits. Founded in 1977 in Charlotte, N.C., by Jack Fulk and Richard Thomas, the brand now operates over 800 restaurants in the Southeast. Deeply influenced by “Southern hospitality,” Bojangles draws guests back to its restaurants with friendly crews focused on making the experience memorable for customers.
Bojangles is poised to begin an aggressive expansion across Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Ohio. The fast-food brand is on a mission to deliver a “taste of the South” to the rest of the country.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Sergio Perez, Sr. Director of Omnichannel Initiatives at Bojangles, about building the Bojangles Reward program, forming partnerships that leverage customer affinity, and driving personalization by knowing what resonates best with customers.
Bojangles is a Carolina-born restaurant brand specializing in Southern food like hand-breaded fried chicken and made-from-scratch biscuits. Founded in 1977 in Charlotte, N.C., by Jack Fulk and Richard Thomas, the brand now operates over 800 restaurants in the Southeast. Deeply influenced by “Southern hospitality,” Bojangles draws guests back to its restaurants with friendly crews focused on making the experience memorable for customers.
Bojangles is poised to begin an aggressive expansion across Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Ohio. The fast-food brand is on a mission to deliver a “taste of the South” to the rest of the country.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Sergio Perez, Sr. Director of Omnichannel Initiatives at Bojangles, about building the Bojangles Reward program, forming partnerships that leverage customer affinity, and driving personalization by knowing what resonates best with customers.
Good afternoon, good morning. It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's having safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty series. In this series we speak with leading brands about what they are seeing in here and on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Sergio Perez. He's a Senior Director of Omni Channel Initiatives at Bojangles. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today, Sergio. How are you?
Sergio Perez:I'm doing all right, Mark. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about all things chicken, biscuits and loyalty.
Mark Johnson:That's good. I love Bojangles. I used to travel a lot in the South with one of my daughters before she went to play soccer in college, and I'd always make it a biscuit, and also I'm a big tea guy, so I love your iced tea, so it's good, good stuff.
Sergio Perez:Something like a good Cajun filet and a little sweet tea to get through the travel.
Mark Johnson:Yes, that's good. I kinda cut my tea like nine times unsweetened it a little bit of sweet, just a little bit of flavor.
Sergio Perez:Half and half, one fourth, whatever. However you want to have it, we'll make it for you.
Mark Johnson:Cool perfect we like to start these on a more personal level, so we'd love to know a little bit more about yourself, your role at Bojangles and maybe a fun fact about you or passion you may have outside of work.
Sergio Perez:For sure so, again, thank you for the opportunity for having me here today to talk about all things, bo, but I'll take you all the way back to where I grew up. I grew up in the US-Mexico border, in a small town of Laredo, and I didn't know it then, but food has really been at the core of my entire life, whether that was cooking with my grandmother in the kitchen or busing tables at the family restaurant, or now I've been leading digital transformation for brands. I've spent almost 10 years of my career working in restaurant marketing for brands like Church's Chicken, Johnny Rockets, Hutter House, Garden Fresh, Perkins Restaurant and Bakery, and now, more recently, here at Bo where I lead the digital transformation for the brand. So really busy and driving digital transactions and helping to grow the business. But in terms of a fun fact, when I am not selling chicken and biscuits, I am marrying couples, so I am an ordained minister. So if anybody out there is looking to get married or renew vows, I am happy to help.
Mark Johnson:That's awesome how long did that process take to become an ordained minister?
Sergio Perez:Not too long A couple weeks of courses. You've got to take one certification class and then you get your certificate online and then you can ordain weddings across the US. You might be able to do it internationally if you follow up some additional paperwork. But I just completed a wedding two weekends ago in Texas, so I got lucky to marry a good friend of mine in his lovely way.
Mark Johnson:That's awesome. For those who may not be familiar with Bojangles, can you give us a brief overview of what Bojangles is, what you guys do, how you were formed, what your vision is for the company?
Sergio Perez:Bojangles is a Carolina-based restaurant brand that specializes in crave able Southern food, like our hand-breaded fried chicken or made from scratch biscuits or legendary tea, which you talked about. We were founded in 1977 here in Charlotte, north Carolina. Today we operate a little bit over 800 restaurants in the Southeast, but we have a real set focus on an aggressive expansion across Florida, texas, the tri State area, nevada. We're open in restaurants across the board, so we're incredibly excited to take a little taste of the South to the rest of the country.
Mark Johnson:Excellent when you look at Bojangles' reward program. I can tell some bit more about the program, how it's founded, what the goals objectives of the program are and how it works, and what are some of the benefits for being a member.
Sergio Perez:For sure. So it's an interesting source when I got here and a really interesting evolution of the brand. So when I got here three years ago, I inherited a program that was a website and any club program. There was no ordering capabilities, there was sort of just a base of a database and that's all we really have from an overall infrastructure program perspective. So in a course of about six months we built a new website, we launched a new app, we introduced our technology hub partners like Sparkfly to build digital wallet capabilities, we launched a CDP and a CRM, we added AI and location technology to overarching the overall experience.
Sergio Perez:But our vision was very simple how do we create an engagement program that drives profitable transactions for the business but also creates meaningful personalized experiences for users?
Sergio Perez:So our program really focuses on three big pillars. One is delivering deals and promotions to users based on their purchase history and how they engage with the brand. Second is really about exclusivity, so we want to make sure that we have other exclusive bundles or offerings or price points available to customers on the app and the website. And finally, which is probably the most interesting component of this program today, is unlocking exclusive offers through our sports partnerships and influencers. So specifically, for example, the Carolina Panthers serve big partner bowers. Anytime there's the Panthers force, three false starts, everybody in the stadium and anybody in the north and South Carolina would get an offer, a deal. We also have an extensive partnership with Barstool Sports in which we leverage their talent and their college talent to create content and deliver promotional codes through those partnerships to unlock special rewards and offers specific on the app and website. So those are the top line, the construct of what the program looks like about today.
Mark Johnson:Okay, and how do you go about determining what partnerships work, or the ones you have, do they suffice for now? Because that's a prize and delight, that uniqueness, differentiating the program is very important. So how do you determine that the partnerships that that work effectively for Bojangles?
Sergio Perez:Yes, there's a couple things that we look at. One is really the affinity to our customer base and the geographic location of our restaurants. So we know football and sports is at the heart of the history of Bojangles. We know that music is also at the heart of Bojangles customers. So we look for properties. That one they have geographic footprint, coverage of our restaurants.
Sergio Perez:But two brands and partnerships or entities that have you know where guests have a high affinity for or where potential customers that fit the model of you know who our target audience is engages. So things like college football, the ACC and the SEC are big, long standing partners of the business. We've done sports partnerships with folks like Dale Jr, Carolina Panthers players. Right now we work with Starting Quarterback for the Panthers, Bryce Young. From a music perspective, we've done deals with folks like Lee Bryce who help bring again a different audience to the business. So again we're looking for geography composition and then we're looking for that affinity to either attract new consumers or the ability to draw frequency of some of the users that we already have in our footprint.
Mark Johnson:Okay, excellent. As you know, Bojangles has recognized or has been recognized as the finalist for this year's Lothian 360 Customer Experience Awards, based on the brand's engagement strategies utilizing technology, a strong customer acquisition approach and also, how are you leveraging data to increase the efficacy of your efforts. Can you tell us a little bit more about the successes Bojangles has championed this year?
Sergio Perez:For Charlo. First, we're grateful for being named a finalist by Loyalty 360. We're in good company with the rest of the brands, so for that we are grateful. You know, for us, the way we think about the overarching success of the business is really all about sales. You know, we recognize that there's KPI it's like conversions, customer lifetime value, frequency but ultimately the most important measure for the business is how we're growing transactions.
Sergio Perez:And it's not just about our ability to acquire and convert users, but how are we leveraging digital whether that is technology or data to drive increment or unprofitable transactions. So for us, I think the biggest success story is being able to take a business that was really $0 from a digital perspective to we're on track to deliver over $100 million in digital sales for the business, which is for me and for the business and overall, big accomplishment. And it's really been a result of how do we build the right strategy, how do we bring the right tech stack to the party and, ultimately, how do we build a program that's meaningful enough for our customers. So again, for me the biggest area of success and championship is how do we drive incremental revenue for our restaurants, because that's ultimately what matters for the business.
Mark Johnson:Excellent. When you look at technology and the app that you have Bojangles, you know how does that appeal or enhance the appeal to your customers to drive more loyalty, to drive a better experience.
Sergio Perez:Yeah, so you know, technology for us is that at the forefront of the overarching strategy. We want to make sure that we're creating, you know, meaningful experiences that are easy to engage with. And, first and foremost, it's really about, you know, making it easy for people to order, and I know that sounds like a very basic thing to talk about, but making fried chicken and biscuits takes time and it gets a little messy, so you know it. Just, you know, takes a while to make. So the ability for customers to be able to order their favorite food without having to worry about the cluster running online has been sort of the core of how do we create a good ordering experience to get our customers time back. But beyond that, you know, our digital wallet has been, which is far by by spark fly, makes it easy for customers to receive and redeem those offers, which helps us drive overarching conversion rates. You know our location technology with radar allows us to deliver fresher, hotter foods, so it takes into account where you are to make sure that they're delivering the order to the restaurant PLS at the right time, so when they get there, your food is fresher and hotter and for those fried chicken and biscuit lovers, you know that there's nothing more soul crushing than cold fried chicken and cold biscuits, so making sure that we can deliver hot and fresh is incredibly important.
Sergio Perez:We're also leveraging things like an AI epsilon that recognizes what's on your cart to be able to make meaningful recommendations to improve your experience. So, for example, if you just add a single biscuit to your order, it will recommend if you want to make that a combo. If you order a family meal, it might make a recommendation for extra tea or extra sides. Or, for example, if you always order a boberry biscuit for dessert and you're at checkout and you don't have it, it will ping you to say hey, don't forget about your boberries. So, across the board, we're leveraging a slew of different solutions to make that experience richer and more meaningful for the customer. And then, ultimately, from a customer data platform perspective, is, you know, really empowering us to make better decisions around where we're buying media, what channels we're investing in, what kind of content we're producing, what kind of influencers or partners that we're working with to be able to deliver more personalized experiences for customers? So, again, it's about how do we leverage that to become smarter in our investment and our strategy.
Mark Johnson:Okay, when you look at technology, you're very impactful. You're leveraging a very unique way. Are there any technology initiatives or efforts or kind of technology in general, that you are focused on in the near future?
Sergio Perez:Yeah, so I'll speak for my IT and operations partners. They are actively testing AI drive through technology in our restaurants. We call her Bolinda. She serves over, shows up on time, she takes care of customers.
Sergio Perez:But the thinking on the drive through AI technologies, the ability for us to deliver more consistent data, we would be able to focus on the hospitality of the experience in stores.
Sergio Perez:So it's not a plan to reduce the level, but rather reinvest the labor in those restaurants so we can get better at execution, better at delivering great, memorable experiences for customers. So you're going to see both angles look heavy at AI, both on the drive through side, on the app and web front, and that location technology has waste for us to. How do we again focus on accuracy, hot and fresher food, because those are big components of the technology experience. It's not just about building a good app or a good website. You can have the best points program or rewards program in the world, but if at the store level we're not executing well, it doesn't matter how good the perk is, folks are not going to want to continue to use the brand. So we're again focused on how do we make the experience easier for customers, to make sure that we're helping drive that loyalty over the course of time.
Mark Johnson:Excellent Emotional loyalty is a very important topic to brands these days. We have a kind of a quarterly meeting on emotional loyalty to the paper over the summer on emotional loyalty. Brands definitely want to drive it, but they don't necessarily how to do it. Measurement can be challenging, especially with the CFO a little more, you know, tightly monitoring costs associated with the program. Now, when you look at emotional loyalty, what does it mean to Bojangles and how are you imbuing and cultivating emotional loyalty with your customers?
Sergio Perez:For sure you know I think you're this is a conversation that's happening across industry, and just how difficult and how far loyalty is these days, not because you know the programs are ineffective or they're not good enough, but rather there's a lot of competition out there. Right Today more than ever, people have lots of restaurant forces and so the margin of error, both in execution and experience, are very slim. But at Bo it's a little bit interesting and different because there is a cult like following for the brand, unlike any other brand that I've seen in terms of this southeast area I think about Whataburger in Texas, I think about In-N-Out in the West Coast. There is any time you say it's Bo time, which is our tagline People tend to smile. They, you know, tend to tell you their story about their favorite item. I mean, we started this conversation about you telling me about your tea and biscuit experience, and that is part of the DNA of the brand. We have been able to, over 46 years, cultivate a cult like following for the brand. You know, right now it's a holiday season and you know a lot of folks on social will say things like I know I'm finally home when I've had my first chicken filet biscuit, or I know I'm home when you know I'm sharing a plate of food with my family over a tailgate and from that perspective I think we've been very lucky and fortunate to be able to tap into that cultural relevance of the brand.
Sergio Perez:But more specifically, to answer your question, you know the drivers of loyalty typically have not changed just about the ability to execute consistently in the restaurant to make sure that you know you can deliver meaningful, good experiences consistently. It's about providing the right value for customers, not necessarily in price, but making sure that they feel that a dollar spent in your establishment, this $1 will spend. And it's also about driving personalization beyond just a name right. It's about recognizing how somebody is engaging with you and tapping into that. So if somebody, for example, spends 90% of their transactions at breakfast, some marketers will say, well, let's try to move them to a different day part and send a dinner message or a different type of message. It's let's leverage what customers are telling us about themselves to make sure that we're, you know, consistently delivering rich. You know engagements to continue to drive that engagement. So it's consistency and experience. It's, you know, a value that they feel it's worth spending their dollar in and it's making sure that we build communications and marketing programs that are feel like relevant and personal for them.
Mark Johnson:One thing that's interesting that you talked to touch on this a little bit. You know you're laser focused on understanding customers and listening to them, understanding what they're what they want, right. A lot of brands struggle with that. You've focused on the South Southeast right. You talked about what a burger and in and out burger. In the West and the Southwest they're different. So instead of moving to the Southwest or moving out West, you're technically focused on execution within the South and Southeast right. So you know your customers, you know what they want, you know that, that focus, you know knowing the cultural relevance of your clients and your audience. You know how does that lead to success, because a lot of people say, oh, let's go out West, potentially, or let's go to the, the Northwest right, but you realize there's a great opportunity to continue to execute and focus on the current customers.
Sergio Perez:Yeah, I think there's. There's a little secret sauce called Southern Hospitality and I think that matters a ton for the brand. So one of the things that I've always been struck by, a very jangle says you know, you might be visiting a restaurant and somebody pulls up to the restaurant and the manager or crew member will say, hey, drop a kitchen, play biscuit with bow rounds and a sweet tea. And you're like, well, the customer hasn't ordered yet. And someone will say, or the crew member will say, well, that person comes every day and gets the same thing. And so for us this how do we take that moment that happens in the restaurants in terms of that hospitality and bring you to the digital front to make sure that we're delivering that type of Southern hospitality, whether it's a copy we use, whether it's, you know, the presenting the menu in a way that makes it easy for you to order. So if you always get bone in chicken, you always get a two piece dinner. Then, like that should be the first thing you see on the menu, versus you having to explore the entire experience to get to the two piece dinner. So it's really finding those moments in which we can deliver hospitality through digital, by making ordering EC, by making funding your right item CC, by making redemption CC. Those kinds of nudges help, over time, make every customer feel like they're one of them.
Sergio Perez:The other piece that's also important to us is making sure that people feel like they're getting not just value for their dollar, but they're getting a little bit more than that. So in the South, when you, you know, go to someone's house for dinner and maybe you might be on invited or you bring an extra guest, there's always an extra seat at the table for you. There's always a plate to go for you after dinner. So it's about mirroring that ease and convenience from a business experience and making sure that the food delivers on abundance value over time. So again, we're really focused on how do we leverage the data that customers are sharing with us about their menu preferences, location preferences, their data, their day part preferences and turning those into marketing campaigns that will help track conversion because of how easy and relevant they are for them.
Mark Johnson:Excellent, and when you look at other customer multi programs, there's a great community. Obviously we have a great growing community, but you know, understanding what others are doing across the aisle, across the vertical potentially is very important. So are there programs that you look at, do you admire, that you're loyal to, and so what do you like about their offerings?
Sergio Perez:For sure, I think you know there's three and the restaurant industry that I think have, you know, continued to set the standard in terms of scale, in terms of innovation, and for me that is, you know, mcdonald's, taco Bell and Panera, across the board, have been, you know, leaders in the space.
Sergio Perez:And what to me is the most interesting part in this transition you've seen over the last year, year and a half, is the movement to meaningful perks and benefits as part of an overarching program. On top of just the currency of the program, whether it's points for, whether it's cash back, whatever the currency might be, everybody's really focused on perks and exclusivity as a way to plus up those programs and I think that speaks to customers looking for deeper, richer experiences with brands. So, you know, whether it's the Fry Friday that McDonald's has, whether it's a beverage description program that Panera has, looking at perks outside of just the currency of those programs, I think it's not only smart move by the industry but, you know, an addition to what that will make you feel like you're doing something and I think it's a great way to make richer experiences from a digital perspective. So, again, looking at those benefits is going to be a thing that the industry is going to start to shift you and you know they're leading again the way in that area.
Mark Johnson:Excellent. And what can Loyalty 360 to help you and your team the team of Bojangles, you know, with your customer reward, customer loyalty efforts.
Sergio Perez:And I think that's a call for you know the industry, for us, you know loyalty, and I like to call them engagement programs, because we've gone through a very interesting transition over.
Sergio Perez:You know, really, the last 10 years has started with folks mailing in you know those slips to like Burger King and McDonald's, like you used to as a kid, and you get something on the mail for your birthday to the E Club, to everybody in the 2000s, started moving to loyalty programs the 2000s and now, as we head into the 2010s or 2020s, really engagement and putting data at the core of the experience is something that you know I think a lot of folks are going to be focused on, but for me is you know we've had a slew of technology and rapid innovation in our restaurants that impacts our customers, that impacts our franchisees, that impacts, you know, the team members or the crew members that work in our restaurant.
Sergio Perez:So for me is about how do we make sure that these changes are actually having a meaningful impact on those three constituencies? How is digital and data making the crew member experiences here? How is it driving real value to customers and how is it driving financial benefit to the franchisees and brands? So, advocacy around, how do we create best practices, advocacy around? How do we, you know, improve digital literacy for our crew members and our franchisees to understand the real impact of data and investing in digital? I think it's going to be crucial for the adoption of loyalty programs and the evolution of loyalty programs and then to show over the next little bit.
Mark Johnson:Excellent, thanks for going through that, great to hear. Now we have the fun part, the quick fire questions. Please limit these to one word or short phrase, please, or the our editor and kind of gets mad at me, and she's always mad at me. So what's your favorite word.
Sergio Perez:Howdy, howdy it's. It's a good warm Texas greeting.
Mark Johnson:Okay, great. What is your least favorite word Sergio: Offline?
Sergio Perez:Mark: Okay what excites you. Profitable transactions. What do you find tiresome? Long beading, second being email Outside of Bojangles. What is your favorite restaurant? Love, a great text mex place in Charlotte called Super Rica. Mark: What profession, of the one you currently in, would you like to try?
Mark Johnson:Sergio: Public office, okay. What brand do you think does loyalty the best Sergio: Love Delta, Delta. Okay. Who inspired you to become a professional? Sergio: Joe Boulder former CMO of Saks Peace and Johnny Rockets Excellent.
Sergio Perez:Mark: And what is your favorite book of recommendation that you make to colleagues?
Mark Johnson:Sergio: Measure by measure what matters, since the discipline of objectives and key results.
Sergio Perez:So as a good marketer, it's a good read, okay. And how do you want to be a real entrepreneur?
Mark Johnson:I would say someone who's made meaningful contributions to the communities in which I serve. That's awesome
Sergio Perez:Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. It was great to get to know a little bit about you.
Mark Johnson:Bojangles i'm a big fan of the sandwiches in the morning and the iced tea, mostly unsweetened. So thanks for everything for you, for sure, for the, for the industry around. Customer loyalty its great. Right back at you.
Sergio Perez:Thank you for taking the time to listen to that and make sure you join us back for another edition of our leaders in customer loyalty series soon and see that Thanks.