“How important is branding for fast-food chains?”
Earlier this year I was asked this question.
It’s one of those that the more you think about, the more you can’t stop thinking about it. (Or maybe that’s just me?)
Sure, you may have a taste preference for a McDonald’s burger over a Burger King burger, but if I asked you to describe what McDonald’s represents, and how that’s different than what Burger King represents... could you distinguish the two? Do any of these brands actually have contrastable stories, values, missions, goals, promises, visions, audiences, tones or personalities?
No really?! What are they?
A logo isn’t a brand.
And I don’t think the saltiness of fries constitutes brand either.
Ever since propaganda and public relations pioneer Edward Bernays came onto the scene in the 1920’s, drafting off of Walter Lippmann’s work on engineering consent, we’ve been enchanted by the “magical powers” of creative re-framings, enhancing our perception of products and services.
Branding, baby.
We’re so assured of marketing’s effectiveness that we spend $897,000,000,000 annually on it. Quick-service restaurants (QSR) or “fast food” make up a substantial slice of that spend. Chains like Domino’s, alone, spend ~$700M, and McD’s ~$600M each year.
Rather than asking what the return on this investment is, another worthy and more easily calculable question is:
Is there any difference in who frequents each chain?
By answering this more reach-able question, we could reveal if consumer differentiation actually exists between chains... therefore hinting at the possibility of any brand differentiation. Essentially: audience difference as a proxy for brand difference.
For some, it’s an existential question we’d rather not make eye contact with. But let’s...
Over several months, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Andrew Thompson, a brilliant data scientist at Fast Company who led research on this inquiry.
Thompson collected an extensive dataset of Google Maps reviews for 10,000 locations of 16 unique fast-food chains, as well as the reviews those customers left for other kinds of establishments.
The first question asked was whether one could glean any insight into those consumer differences:
Are those who eat at McDonald’s any different than those who eat at Popeyes based upon the reviews they left elsewhere?
Who is the typical KFC persona vs. the typical Arby’s persona? Are Chipotle diners more likely to frequent salons or parks than Subway reviewers? These questions were endless.
But as Thompson found, no matter what...
“The distinctions between a Wendy’s customer and a Taco Bell customer, if they exist at all, are totally dwarfed by the distinction between those [even] willing to step into a quick-service restaurant establishment to begin with versus those who wouldn’t dare.”
Thompson continues:
The differences among various fast-food patrons, where they exist, are so small and granular as to be essentially meaningless — none of these customers are starkly likelier to go to the gym, or to own a gun, or to shop at Sephora.
Fast food is not a car.
In other words:
A fast-food consumer is a fast-food consumer, unlike how a Ford F-150 driver is different than a Tesla Model Y driver.
In this unique research methodology, statistically, it was found there were no defining characteristics between who is likely to frequent Wendy’s vs. say, Taco Bell.
However what the data did reveal was more unexpected:
When analyzing mention frequency of review attributes including customer service, wait time, food quality, order correctness, cleanliness, value, menu options, atmosphere, delivery, technology and hours of operation, certain chains were evaluated differently than others.
Customers expect different things from different chains.
In other words, some attributes were more influential and therefore important to some companies than others.
Arguably, this is what may better define chain differences AKA “brand.”
For example, because Jack in The Box is expected to be open for 24 hours, “hours of operation” is a more important (i.e. influential) attribute than it is for Domino’s whose most important attribute is “delivery.”
By analyzing these recurring attributes across chains, we could identify which were most commonly mentioned and most influential in reviews.
Meanwhile “delivery” is least important attribute for Sonic Drive-In because... well, they don’t deliver and are a drive-in chain.
“Atmosphere” is the most important attribute to Shake Shake than it is for any other chain as people are expected to dine in there, and “cleanliness” is most important for Chipotle as all meals are assembled in front of consumers... and also maybe because its 2015 E. coli outbreak and their $25M fines still haunt them.
In short, for Thompson, “every brand is an embodiment of expectations.” Or as I put it, every brand has their own unique “scorecard.”
For QSR, maybe we’ve been thinking about brand with the wrong criteria in mind.
Perhaps, what better defines each QSR “brand” is not product or tonal differentiations or logos or celebrity endorsements or collab partnerships or stunts or shticks, but rather what consumers expect from each chain more than they do for other chains.
If these chains re-allocated a fraction of marketing spend into whatever attribute is scoring lowest — yet most important for their given company — wouldn’t that be a more definable brand play? Own what you’re known for, do it better than anyone, and use that as a tool for strategic differentiation amongst peers.
Slow down. You can also still compete on menu, etc. Attributes just become another lever.
And don’t think they’re already doing this.
Now this is where things get contentious...
When Thompson sought to uncover what matters most and least to fast-food customers overall by analyzing score variance on a given attribute, he found that two attributes mattered most:
Customer service and food quality.
“Among all the factors predicting a positive or negative score across all fast-food brands, customer service is far and away the most important...”
This as a mind-blowing irony.
The single greatest attribute influencing millions of fast-food chain experiences and reviews across the country is customer service.
Yet QSR is the most notorious culprit of employee exploitation, treating their most important customer-facing assets so fucking poorly.
QSR is not just mildly underinvesting in one of their most valuable brand attributes, but they’re actively abusing them.
This is corporate self-sabotage.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the average hourly rate of a fast-food worker in 2023 was <$15, totaling an average salary of $14,328. Meanwhile, with 69% of workers under the age of 25, child labor violations in the fast-food industry have more than tripled in the past decade. Conditions and prospects are so grim across the industry that only 54% of QSR employees reached 90 days of work retention before quitting.
The kicker is that the brilliant minds at corporate are not only overlooking this, but rather see these employees as the threat. The solution? Self-service kiosk screens. The current strategy is: rather than have mistreated customer-facing representatives, just don’t have any at all. (The highest form of human disrespect.)
According to Thompson’s findings, this strategy could have more dire repercussions than any organization may realize.
While self-service kiosks were once touted to increase upsells (without the shame of super-sizing an order in front of an employee), a recent study from Temple University found that when lines form behind customers using those kiosks, they experience more stress and actually purchase less food. Further, customers using kiosks can often take longer to order as they navigate cumbersome screens. They also frequently break down on users or aren’t even synced up with available products. This creates pain for consumers and the remaining employees. Efforts to replace humans also create net-new PR crises as they’ve done for Dunkin’.
Looking beyond QSR, as for retail chains, self-checkout is also backfiring with decreased perceived loyalty (no cashier face time) and increased merchandise losses (customer scanning errors and shoplifting).
To make the point crystal clear, let’s recap what’s happening:
According to millions of QSR reviews across the nation, customer service is a more important attribute than food quality itself when dictating an experience, and one of the biggest priorities for the industry is eliminating that asset.
So in our reality where service and food quality are so critical in informing a purchase experience, do collabs with celebs or IP cross-over marketing matter as much as we think (or hope)?
Unfortunately, we will never know.
We’ll never know because it’s a question that will never be attempted to be answered.
There is no incentive to uncover this truth, because what if we learned such millions are worthless?
We should know. But...
We don’t want to know.
Studying the ineffectiveness of something is too great a risk for job security, industry stability and the maintenance of self-worth. Why in the world would anyone want to support why their work isn’t as important as they think?
This begs a few more question:
What questions are you currently incentivized to overlook?
What alternative truths are too painful to exist or admit so no one bothers questioning the status quo?
And are we doing “cool,” “hot,” “innovative” work because it’s actually good for business, or because we selfishly just want to?
Maybe such “culturally-relevant” marketing work makes the over-processed workplace just appetizing enough to stick around... not because it’s making anyones’ life any better, purchase any easier or retail experience any more enjoyable.
These are all still on the menu. You just have to pick them.