Chicken Salad Chick increases sales for 16 consecutive quarters

After a successful 2019, fast casual chain Chick Salad Chick set a goal to open 400 units by the year 2025.

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Chicken Salad Chick offers more than a dozen flavors of chicken salad (Chick Salad Chick).
Chicken Salad Chick offers more than a dozen flavors of chicken salad (Chick Salad Chick).

After a successful 2019, fast casual chain Chick Salad Chick set a goal to open 400 units by the year 2025.

In February, the regional brand reported that 2019 was its most successful year in company history, earning more than $153.3 million in system sales and a 4.4 percent increase in comp sales year over year. Chick Salad Chick also announced that it had achieved 16 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth.

“Looking at the year ahead, as our brand is poised for another year of significant growth, we’re energized to keep the momentum going and continue our accelerated expansion plans to bring more Chicks to communities across key regions in the U.S.,”  says Scott Deviney, CEO of Chicken Salad Chick.

Chick Salad Chick was founded in Auburn, Alabama in 2008 by Stacy and Kevin Brown. It’s menu features more than a dozen flavors of chicken salad, side salads, signature sandwiches, soups and desserts.

Seeking new franchisees

The regional brand currently has 150 locations in 16 states. Forty of these stores opened in 2019, a 38.5% increase in units. Chick Salad Chick also signed 26 franchise agreements last year.

Going forward, the chain plans to open 50 restaurants a year, expanding throughout Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, Texas, Arkansas and Florida. Since January 1, the brand has already announced new units in Louisiana, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas and Florida.

Many of the new units will be franchises. Presently, 70% of all Chick Salad Chick units are franchised, but the goal is to reach 80%. The brand is targeting franchise development throughout the Midwest region.

“We’ve been extremely focused on [the concentric model] and that has helped us without having some of the pitfalls that other companies might have,” Deviney says. “We haven’t stretched distribution, we haven’t stretched the brand really too far. And that’s what we’ve been so focused on is making sure we’re doing it the right way. Could we have grown faster? Possibly, yes. We felt like when we opened 24 restaurants in 2018, we opened 40 restaurants in ’19, and open 50 this year, we’ve been building to this.”

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