Chick Fil?

A is releasing its own entertainment app, you guys with family friendly shows and podcasts.

According to cnbc, Chick Fil?

A plans to launch a new app on November 18th with a slate of original animated shows, scripted podcasts, games, recipes and ebooks aimed at families.

A preview of the app viewed by CNBC included the first 22 minute episode of Legends of Evergreen Hills, which continues or protagonist Sam's adventures in the fantasy world of Evergreen Hills.

The first installment of Hidden Island, a scripted podcast about a family that shipwrecks on a deserted island.

And a step by step cooking tutorial that uses a Chick Fil?

A milkshake as a key ingredient.

Customers can pre download the free Chick Fil A play app for their phones, iPads and Android devices ahead of the launch next month.

Chris, I'm going to have you wrap this up.

This is in your wheelhouse, as you said.

Are you buying or selling the idea of Chick Fil?

A producing and distributing its own content via a standalone app?

I love it, like, you know, disclosure biased here.

You know, major Chick Fil A fan, avid customer, as are many of our.

Omnitalk listeners after last week's show.

Yeah, yeah, they, you know, I love it.

I think it's, it's a good idea for them, right?

It's a brand that people already love.

And, and I think like the, on the surface level, right, people are doing less dining at the restaurant.

You know, there are places like McDonald's starting to close their playpens, et cetera.

I think it's a fun way to have some sort of replacement engagement in the restaurant.

And I thought you brought up a really good point at the beginning of the show of brands doing a good job listening to customers.

And I don't think any customers like actually said, oh my God, I want Chick Fil?

A streaming.

But, but when you look at the release here, they talked about understanding the adjacencies and how the adjacencies to mealtime are shifting.

And instead of having like the play centers, they were looking for activities and games that could be adjacent to meal time that customers are doing now.

Parents with iPads and things at restaurants, I think it's a great idea to have a slightly different engagement in the restaurant, but then outside the restaurant you just extend your connection to that customer into totally new environments when you Chick Fil A was never being discussed.

So like, is it gonna be a massive win?

Probably not.

Is there gonna be a lot of halo effect from deepening connection with the brand and you know, can you market to kids without blatantly marketing to kids with this.

Yeah, probably.

I like it.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the question that they bring up in this article too, that I thought was interesting.

Like Procter and Gamble did this soap opera early on.

Like, is this the next is, is Chick Fil A the next png?

And do they have the ability to drive traffic to another, you know, destination?

We'll see.

Lakshman, where do you come down on this?

Well, if they, if they, if they figure out the licensing fees and all the royalties and everything with others in terms of, you know, how they're going to product go to production services on this one.

Right.

So if it is a low overhead and they not invested a ton into that and have a lot more AI driven content generation going on here, this is a real use case for, you know, asset like model for them to develop and deliver content quite significantly.

And kids are always, you know, stuck to their iPads so we can have greater engagement.

I think it just increases two things.

One is traffic, where kids have a reason to go to Chick Fil A now and number two, duration for which they can stay in the store.

So you at least have to stay for the duration of the video.

Likely.

Right.

And they likely, you know, give free wi fi and whatnot for this.

And 8 to 10 minutes will likely get extended to 15 to 20 minutes.

The longer you stay, the more you buy.

Which in case drives the basket size and the aoe.

Yeah.

And I mean, Chris, what are your thoughts here?

Walton?

Chris Walton.

Because it's not in the Chick Fil A app.

You use the Chick Fil A app like no one's business.

So I mean, do you think that they'd be better positioned putting this inside of that app experience or, or can they drive traffic to an entirely new app?

I don't know.

I'm starting to feel like this is a glass half empty podcast for me because I, I, I hate this idea too.

I mean, and for the reasons you're saying, I think, you know, the, the P and G analogy is a false analogy because PNG was, was producing that content but distributing it through an existing content network, which is the problem here.

So whether you create your own app or whether you put it in the existing Chick Fil A app, when people are in the entertainment seeking mood, we talk about it all the time on the show.

Like you're competing against TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

That's a hard hurdle to get over.

And so this whole thing, I mean, it's funny, it reminds me of my old boss, Jason Goldberger used to have this thing where he'd say, like, you remember, like the app craze in 2010, 2011, like, roughly.

He'd be like, do you know that Lysol built an app?

Like, why in the hell would Lysol build an app?

But that's what they did, and I think that's what we're seeing here as well, is that a lot of companies are trying to get into this media thing, but they're not thinking about the right way to do it and they're almost over engineering a new wheel too much.

Instead of just saying, okay, yeah, we want to put content in there, we want to create attachment to our brand.

What's the right distribution channels for us to do that?

And that's how you should be thinking of it.

This is, this is way too souped up for my tastes.

Yeah, I mean, and, and I think it actually goes a little bit against what Lakshman was saying because they.

It does involve a heavy amount of capital to invest to make this content and to really.

And to drive traffic to it early on.

Yes, you have AI that can help make this a little bit simpler.

But my only question here is, you know, something that really started to resonate with me when we were at Chop Talk Fall last week, and that is just really rethinking about Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

They are the first digital first generation that has been.

Has started on iPads from the moment that they were coming out of Bye bye baby.

And now they are.

Are looking at content.

They're exploring brands and experiencing brands in a digital way like they never have before.

So is this.

Is.

Is Chick Fil a really, like, doubling down and saying this is how we're going to try to invest with the next generation of consumer.

We know we have them.

We know that they want to come to our stores.

We know that the content that we're generating on the social platforms is working with them.

How do we get them further embedded with us?

And that's the only question that I have here is like, will they actually be able to pull this off?

Because they're really putting all of their investment in doing that in a way that a lot of other retailers aren't doing anymore.

Especially like Walmart last year was doing, trying to do this too, with their Add to Heart series that we haven't heard anything about yet this year.

But could this be.

Could this be them being kind of, you know, ahead of their time?

Yeah, but, and, and to that point, like Walmart, we haven't heard word one about that from Walmart this year.

And they were doing that through YouTube too.

So like.

But no, no.

What do you do you like this idea?

And though like would.

Is this how you would advise them trying to approach Gen Z?

And I wouldn't do it in this way.

I think I try to keep it within the Chick Fil A app.

I think that makes more sense as a starting point.

And then using clips or content to put on the social platforms on YouTube, on TikTok where the generation is exposing themselves or discovering content and then I drive them into the app for long form content if that's what they want.