While Krystal said its new Game Time Wings menu item kicks off a whole new ballgame, the new product and related marketing campaign are not targeting new fans of the fast-food brand.
Customers of the chain’s 376 restaurants throughout the South and Southeast already like to eat wings and watch sports, said Brad Wahl, vice president of marketing for the Krystal Co. So Game Time Wings, as well as the six-city sampling tour of the Krystal Crave Cruiser beginning this weekend, are more meant to increasing repeat business of current guests.
“To grow our business, our No. 1 strategy is to develop frequency with our core customer,” Wahl said. “Getting that Krystal lover to choose us one more visit can go a long way. The person that comes into Krystal periodically is also a person who likes wings … and Krystal customers are fans of sports in general. Game Time Wings for us was about pulling together those passions and then tying it together as a kickoff for us in football season.”
While the wings were rolled out in time for football season, the product was branded generally as food for “game time” because wings also are popular with fans of other sports, Wahl said, citing college basketball’s Final Four weekend as a best-selling day for wings. Krystal also will pitch the wings to fans of NASCAR, and the Crave Cruiser’s tour will end Halloween weekend at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Ala.
The chain has offered chicken wings before as a limited-time offer, but it made several improvements with Game Time Wings that will make it a permanent menu item, Wahl said. The product it now procures can be prepared quickly, he said, and the dry rubs it uses can allow variety in flavor profiles while still making a wing that can be eaten in the car, without fear of dripping sauce everywhere.
Game Time Wings are available in orders of five, 10 or 20 and in three flavors: Hot ‘N Wild, Zingin’ Buffalo and Smokin’ BBQ.
In addition to the Crave Cruiser’s sampling tour, several restaurants will receive football-theme makeovers, with paper-football games for guests to play inside. The sampling and branding aspects of the tour also have the added benefit of generating news for Krystal’s social-media pages, giving fans and followers more reasons to move among those pages and Krystal’s website, Wahl said.
“Our two key objectives are brand awareness at events and getting this product into the mouths of our fans,” he said. “We’re not looking it [the Cruiser] as a portable Krystal, we’re looking at it as a way to get brand association between our wings and sports, and as a moving billboard.”
The tour begins this Saturday on campus at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where the Mocs will take on Appalachian State.
“We believe and know that Krystal lovers love sports,” Wahl said, “and the marrying together of their love for wings and sports, and letting Krystal bring them together — we expect it to be a home run for us.”
Chattanooga-based Krystal was founded in 1932 and operates in 11 states.
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].