Fast-food chain Hungry Jack’s is growing its business with fresh menu and focus on customer service
“That social media stuff – it can do either a lot worse than you expected, or a lot better,” Green said. The Biscoff Storm was relaunched in early November. “The same thing happened. Really popular, ran out.”
Store refurbishments have been a key focus as digital self-serve menus become the norm for fast food outlets. Over $70 million a year is being funnelled into new restaurants as well as renovating existing ones to keep pace with its main rival.
“There’s a lot of money that’s going into [McDonald’s] restaurants, so we’re trying to catch up,” he said. “Where we’re really trying to differentiate ourselves is service.”
To incentivise this, Hungry Jack’s rewards some high-performing employees with better wages. “Our goal is to pay our restaurant managers two to three times the industry to be the best restaurant operators in the industry,” said Green.
A typical restaurant manager will earn anywhere between $60-80,000. “Most of them [are earning] above $100 [thousand] and some we’ve got some people earning around $200,000 a year.” Late last year, four restaurant managers who broke sales records were taken out to dinner by eponymous founder Jack Cowin himself at an upscale Italian restaurant.
“It’s really about them running really, really good restaurants, looking after their people, looking after the guest. And then if the top line grows and the bottom line grows, they get rewarded.”
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Green spent nearly three decades of his career at McDonald’s, starting as a burger flipper and winding up in charge of operations in Australia, the US, Malaysia and South Africa at various points. He went on to lead Red Rooster for three years before deciding to exit the fast food industry until he was convinced to return by Cowin, who is also chairman and majority shareholder of pizza giant Domino’s’ Australian operations.
Green intends to grow the store footprint to 600 stores, but says the rollout will be carefully considered to avoid new stores cannibalising existing ones once a certain scale is achieved.
The business will have to contend with not only local competitors but international players such as US chain Wendy’s, which made national headlines in early 2023 after announcing it was having a second crack at the Australian market. Its first attempt resulted in the sale of its remaining 11 stores to none other than Hungry Jack’s.
“We welcome competition,” he said in a refrain oft-repeated by business executives. “They sort of own the quality space in the US. What I would say [is] in Australia, we own the quality space.” Grill’d is a strong third competitor, he noted. “I think there is limited space or opportunity for somebody else, but good luck to them.”
In any case, the chief executive is not afraid to hold a position that some Australians would hotly contest.
“Australia is one of the most sophisticated coffee markets in the world,” he said. One of? “New Zealand is number one.”
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