Chick-fil-A to launch leisure app Recreation with exhibits and podcasts

Rooster sandwiches, waffle fries, milkshakes—and now TV exhibits and podcasts?

Chick-fil-A plans to launch a brand new app Nov. 18 with a lineup of authentic animated exhibits, scripted podcasts, video games, recipes and e-books geared toward households.

Whereas it is an uncommon transfer for a restaurant firm to enter the crowded media world, Chick-fil-A has been increasing past meals for years now — with the final word objective of driving extra individuals to its greater than 3,000 eating places. As of 2019, Chick-fil-A ranks because the third-largest restaurant chain in the USA by gross sales, trailing solely Starbucks and McDonald’s, with far fewer places than both. Final yr, its income reached $7.89 billion, based on franchisee disclosure paperwork.

Because it tries to drive extra restaurant gross sales, the corporate has offered branded merchandise, equivalent to a sleeping bag that appears just like the packaging for its rooster sandwich, and created spinoff brand called Pennycakewhich presents family-friendly video games and puzzles. And within the final 5 years it has been launched animated shorts on YouTube in the course of the vacation season as a part of the Evergreen Hills Tales sequence.

“We have been taking note of some analysis and conversations we have had with households who’re our clients, and insights have emerged that content material and video games are proper subsequent to mealtimes,” stated Dustin Britt, CEO of Chick-fil-A model technique, leisure and media.

“Our perception is that as we add worth to their expertise, we give them a cause to wish to take pleasure in extra Chick-fil-A with us,” he added.

A preview of the app seen by CNBC included the primary 22-minute episode of “Legends of the Evergreen Hills”, which continues the adventures of the protagonist Sam within the fantasy world of Evergreen Hills; the primary installment of “Hidden Island,” a scripted podcast a couple of household shipwrecked on a abandoned island; and a step-by-step cooking tutorial that makes use of a Chick-fil-A milkshake as a key ingredient.

Clients can pre-download the free Chick-fil-A Play app for his or her iPhone, iPad and Android units forward of subsequent month’s launch.

Whereas lots of Chick-fil-A’s clients nonetheless benefit from the restaurant’s playgrounds, extra of its clients are actually utilizing its drive-thru lanes and ordering supply, based on Khalilah Cooper, Chick-fil-A’s vp of brand name technique , promoting and media. Rival McDonald’s is slowly phasing out its PlayPlaces, a change that’s probably the results of fewer youngsters utilizing the playgrounds, well being and security issues and a shift away from advertising to youngsters.

“We see this app as a approach to create a digital playground for the entire household to take pleasure in, whether or not they’re at our eating places, within the automobile, driving to soccer observe and even enjoyable at dwelling,” Cooper instructed CNBC. “We wish this to be a continuation of our signature restaurant hospitality and generosity.”

The app’s content material focuses on themes equivalent to generosity, friendship, drawback fixing, creativity and entrepreneurship, based on Cooper. Chick-fil-A designed the app content material to attraction to youngsters 12 and beneath and their mother and father.

After the preliminary launch, new episodes of “Legends of Evergreen Hills” might be launched each week in the course of the holidays; Hidden Island will observe an analogous drop schedule. Subsequent yr, the Play app will launch Ice Lions, one other scripted audio sequence based mostly on the true story of Kenyan youngsters who wish to type the nation’s first ice hockey workforce.

Many of the content material that might be obtainable on the app is created with exterior companions led by Chick-fil-A’s inner workforce, however a few of it’s licensed. The corporate doesn’t disclose the names of its exterior companions.

“We’re continuously occupied with what further parts we are able to add to the app over time,” Cooper stated.

In August media publication The deadline has been met that Chick-fil-A works with exterior manufacturing corporations for content material, together with unscripted exhibits equivalent to a household sport present.

“I’ll say that we’re exploring a wide range of several types of content material, and all the things proper now could be a possible alternative for us. We’ll continue to learn and researching and determining what issues work,” Britt stated.

As legacy media gamers prefer it Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have discovered that creating content material is dear and attracting viewers is tough given the plethora of choices obtainable on streaming companies.

For manufacturers like Chick-fil-A, the calculation is just a little completely different. As a substitute of utilizing content material to monetize subscriptions or adverts, they goal to promote extra of their very own merchandise. It has been that manner ever since Procter & Gamble the primary sponsored daytime radio exhibits to promote their cleaning soap – creating the cleaning soap opera.

“There’s a variety of content material creation occurring from media homes for manufacturers, and I feel manufacturers wish to benefit from that as a result of it feels extra genuine. It feels extra like content material than promoting,” stated Stephanie Estes, chief media officer of Goodway Group, a digital advertising company.

Newer entrants embrace Starbuckswhich announced this summer that it’ll create authentic content material via a partnership with Sugar23. And in January, Chuck E. Cheese said is working with “Prime Chef” producer Magical Elves to create its personal sport present.

“I feel the largest query I’d have, as a advertising skilled, is what’s the enterprise drawback you are attempting to resolve? And is the greenback invested in that content material creation or explicit initiative going to repay greater than spending that greenback some other place within the advertising funnel?” Estes stated.

For Chick-fil-A, branded content material provides it a approach to join with youngsters — with out the identical stink as promoting on to them — and foster model goodwill from their mother and father.

And in contrast to Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, Chick-fil-A has some flexibility to search out out if the funding works. As a family-owned firm, it isn’t beholden to shareholders who would possibly object to a pricey advertising effort.

Chick-fil-A additionally has money to burn, particularly given its fast progress over the previous decade. From 2018 to 2023, its system-wide gross sales almost doubled. Final yr, it reported internet income of $1.07 billion. Chairman Dan Cathy, who served as CEO from 2013 to 2021 and is the daddy of present CEO Andrew Cathy, has a internet price of $10.6 billion, based on Forbes Ratings.

Coincidentally, Dan Cathy owns Atlanta-based Trilith Studios, whose levels have served as units for a lot of Marvel films and TV exhibits, plus Francis Ford Coppola’s 2024 mega-flop Megalopolis. Tax breaks and low cost labor have helped Atlanta turn out to be the “Hollywood of South” over the previous decade. Cathy has beforehand been criticized for remarks he made in 2012 opposing same-sex marriage, and the corporate’s basis donated to anti-LGBTQ teams throughout his tenure as CEO.

Dan Cathy was indirectly concerned within the improvement of the Play app or content-related choices, based on Cooper. Chick-fil-A additionally hasn’t labored with its studio — but.

“We’ve not labored immediately with Trilith so far, but it surely’s one thing we proceed to discover the place it makes probably the most sense for each our enterprise and the manufacturers,” she stated.