Alice Crowder, Chief Marketing Officer at Krispy Krunchy Chicken, joins this episode of Give an Ovation to share how she’s helping grow one of the fastest-growing QSR brands in the country. From her roots at major brands like Denny’s and Crystal to leading marketing in the c-store space, Alice dives into how to elevate guest experience, create craveable products, and build brand love through authenticity and quality.

The Origins of Krispy Krunchy Chicken (02:04)

Alice shares how the brand started with one store and has grown to nearly 3,400 locations across all 48 contiguous states.

“Our founder was a c-store owner who loved fried chicken. He marinated it himself and started selling it.”

Influencer Marketing on a Budget (05:12)

Instead of big influencer budgets, Alice explains how they focus on small, passionate creators who already love the product.

“We just reimburse them for their meal. It’s about authenticity, not follower count.”

Guest Experience in the C-Store Space (08:26)

Krispy Krunchy doesn’t control the stores directly, so Alice relies on quality and partnership to ensure strong experiences.

“The biggest part of the guest experience is the quality of the product.”

Value, Quality, and Craveability (09:48)

Alice breaks down the three reasons guests actively seek out Krispy Krunchy Chicken—and why value is not just about price.

“Our consumers deserve better. They deserve high-quality food at a fair price.”

Product Pride and Team Buy-In (13:15)

Authenticity starts with pride in the product, which drives team members to speak passionately about what they’re serving.

“If you give me something I’m proud of, I’m going to talk about it like it’s going to change your life.”

Creating Routine Through Craveability (15:10)

When guests make a habit out of visiting, convenience stores win beyond the chicken sale.

“Putting in a Krispy Krunchy increases overall merchandise sales and traffic.”

Ovation Goes To… (16:30)

Alice recognizes Jason Abelkop and the team at Plein Air for their brilliance in understanding restaurant strategy and analytics.

“He helps me contextualize ideas and understand the math behind marketing.”

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicecrowder/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/krispy-krunchy-foods/

https://www.instagram.com/krispykrunchychicken/

Transcript

00:00:00:03 – 00:00:23:04

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Get all the insights you need to improve without an annoying survey for your guests.

00:00:23:04 – 00:00:31:07

Zack Oates

Learn more at Ovation Up A.com. And today, I cannot even tell you how excited I am. Obviously, I’m always excited about my guests, but today we have.

00:00:31:11 – 00:00:32:01

Alice Crowder

Alice.

00:00:32:06 – 00:00:56:06

Zack Oates

Freakin Crowder with us. She’s the CMO of Crispy Crunchy Foods. She was CMO of Crystal restaurant. She was VP of menu strategy innovation at Tropical Smoothie Cafe. And I mean, she was at Denny’s as well. But this is something that we just talked about. That was pretty fun. She actually was the VP of Marketing at Ovation brand, which is pretty fun because I never met anyone who’s actually worked at ovation.

00:00:56:06 – 00:01:01:15

Zack Oates

But a lot of people have thought that we are that ovation, but we are not. But Alice, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

00:01:01:17 – 00:01:03:09

Alice Crowder

Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m doing great.

00:01:03:15 – 00:01:09:08

Zack Oates

And you know, Alice, you do a lot of speaking. Do you ever have you written a book yet?

00:01:09:10 – 00:01:15:00

Alice Crowder

Now somebody talk to me about that. But I was like, oh, I don’t know if I have the time, but I’m interested.

00:01:15:02 – 00:01:37:23

Zack Oates

Okay? Because you’re someone where every time you get on stage, literally the first time I heard you on stage, I was in the back of the room with a couple of people that were with one person that was going to be on the panel with you, and they were like, oh my gosh, we have Alice on the panel, which means we’ve got to really bring her game, because Alice is always so good on the panels.

00:01:37:23 – 00:02:04:01

Zack Oates

And it was funny because I, you know, this guy done dozens of panels and he was still like extra preparing, just knowing that he was going to be up there with you. And you do a lot of stuff. But for those who aren’t familiar with crispy, crunchy chicken, tell us a little bit about it. And especially if you can talk a little bit about what you talked about on Mag stage, about your strategy around how do you get influencers and what type of influencers do you go after?

00:02:04:07 – 00:02:28:05

Alice Crowder

Yeah. Thank you. I’m always psyched to talk about the best brand in the business. We are crispy, crunchy chicken. We’ve been around 35 years. A lot of folks in this industry don’t know us. Our founder was a convenience store owner and he was an amateur chef as well, and he was looking for ways to increase revenue in his merchandizing section of the store.

00:02:28:05 – 00:02:45:19

Alice Crowder

And so he loved fried chicken. He is from Louisiana. Yeah. He marinated some sauce and spices and started selling it in his store. And then word kind of got out and it spread and it spread and it spread. And pretty soon he had so many stores that wanted to sell crispy crunchy that he gave up his convenience store.

00:02:45:21 – 00:03:22:12

Alice Crowder

And today we have about 3400 just shy of 3400 restaurants across the United States, where in all 48 contiguous states and our primary placement is in gas stations and convenience stores, primarily independent operated guys. So a lot of first generation Americans, a lot of family owned businesses and they see us as an extension of their community business. And in fact, we are more and more we hear people saying, oh, my crispy, crunchy or I didn’t know there was a crispy crunchy outside of my neighborhood.

00:03:22:14 – 00:03:45:22

Alice Crowder

We are a part of their business of, as opposed to them running a brand that they just bought into. We do use influencers very heavily. They’re small influencers. These are folks that usually have posted about us, about how good the chicken is, how surprising it is, and that is something we pride ourselves on. It is a high quality product.

00:03:45:23 – 00:03:53:23

Alice Crowder

You think convenience store food and you think, me, I’m going to get a roller dog that I’m going to have some trouble was later. But this stuff comes in.

00:03:54:00 – 00:04:05:16

Zack Oates

You know, my go to my go to our Lunchables, you know, I mean, like, you can’t go wrong into the lunchable when I, when I stop at a gas station, I’m like, I’m hungry. I’m looking at those rollers, and I’m thinking that I don’t know what that is.

00:04:05:18 – 00:04:35:14

Alice Crowder

And no, I hate the Lunchables. I’ve had my share. But this stuff are bone in and our tenders come in fresh snow, frozen. It’s pre marinated in this mild blend of Canadian seasoning. And they double brought it back of the house. So they give the chicken. We have a fried Terry bread or they bread. The chicken. They then they dip it in a cold water bath which you’ve heard me say this before, if I put you in a cold water bath, you would kind of shrink up and so does the chicken, and it just holds more bread.

00:04:35:16 – 00:04:54:17

Alice Crowder

And so we bred it a second time and then we fry it. The result is that you have a lot of really yummy, crispy, crunchy, golden brown deliciousness that you can actually hear when you bite into it. And that’s what our influencers respond to. So a lot of our influencers are eating in the car. You’re hearing them crunch.

00:04:54:19 – 00:05:12:07

Alice Crowder

You’re seeing like a little bit of delicious juice maybe in the corner of their mouths. And so we reach out to these guys and say, hey, we saw that you love us. We love what you said about us. Would you want to taste new item X or new promotion Y? And a lot of times we just pay for their meal.

00:05:12:09 – 00:05:30:21

Alice Crowder

Now I send them a cute influencer box with like a bucket hat and a keychain or whatever, but the majority of our guys are just doing it for the trade. We do have some that are have a little more population that follows them, and we may give them a little bit, but we don’t pay the big dollars for influencers.

00:05:30:21 – 00:05:34:15

Alice Crowder

Our guys are our guys and they have followings in their communities.

00:05:34:17 – 00:05:51:01

Zack Oates

So. But how do you do that, though, Alice? Because you don’t have a set marketing budget. You’re not a traditional franchisee. You actually just sell the product. It’s kind of like a wow bow model, but I guess, wow Bo is a crispy, crunchy chicken model because you guys have been around. You guys were like the original ghost Kitchen.

00:05:51:03 – 00:06:03:13

Zack Oates

So how does that work in terms of who pays the influencers for that coupon like that? Just come. So you ship them the coupon and then the convenience store will get reimbursed.

00:06:03:15 – 00:06:14:24

Alice Crowder

No, actually the influencer will usually buy their meal whatever they’re going to buy. And it’s usually 10 to $15. And they’ll send us a receipt and we’ll cut them a check. We don’t charge our stores for.

00:06:14:24 – 00:06:25:14

Zack Oates

It, and then you don’t have to give them a coupon or anything like that. You just they buy, you reimburse them. That way you guarantee that they’re going to actually try it. That’s really smart. And then they know it.

00:06:25:14 – 00:06:27:03

Alice Crowder

Works really well. Yeah.

00:06:27:03 – 00:06:41:01

Zack Oates

Yeah. Wow. I like that. And do you have like a following number that you’re looking for of like if you have over a certain amount or under a certain amount over a certain amount, they’re probably too big under a certain amount. It’s not worth it.

00:06:41:03 – 00:06:59:18

Alice Crowder

Not really. It’s a lot more organic than that. We look for people who’ve gone to us, posted about us. Now some people post and it’s clear that they’re looking for somebody to sponsor them, and those aren’t our guys. There’s a guy that just posted yesterday who’s amazing and he has a couple million followers, and he posted about us just yesterday.

00:06:59:18 – 00:07:20:17

Alice Crowder

He already has 42,000 views of it and we had not reached out to him. He tagged us organically and did 15 minutes on it, just basically ate everything on the menu and was like, Sam, this is the most amazing thing. So today we’re reaching out to him saying, hey, thanks, would you like to try our new sauce flight that’s coming out next month?

00:07:20:19 – 00:07:42:05

Alice Crowder

A lot of times happens like that. We’re really looking more for enthusiasm for the product than the brand, than the number of followers. And then we kind of take everybody and then we measure engagement. So I don’t care if you have 5000 followers, but if your engagement numbers are 10 to 15%, I want to have a relationship with you.

00:07:42:08 – 00:07:47:14

Alice Crowder

If people are responding to the way you talk about my brand, I want to have a relationship with you.

00:07:47:16 – 00:07:53:24

Zack Oates

Yeah, I love that, I love that, and by the way, I’m just going to throw it out there if you can’t tell by my shirt. I do love chicken.

00:07:54:01 – 00:08:00:19

Alice Crowder

I love it. I’m going to send you a bucket. Have you send me your address so you have a beautiful, crispy, crunchy, reversible vacuum.

00:08:00:19 – 00:08:23:16

Zack Oates

I love a crispy, crunchy chicken bucket hat. Now thinking about the guest experience because I’m just so interested in your perspective on this. What do you think the most important aspect of guest experiences nowadays, especially considering the fact that you are one step removed? You can’t make your convenience stores do anything. You can’t force them to have standards.

00:08:23:16 – 00:08:26:09

Zack Oates

And so how do you think about the guest experience?

00:08:26:11 – 00:08:44:22

Alice Crowder

Yeah, obviously we both go to a lot of conferences and we talk about guest experience. I don’t think it’s something that you can force, right? I love hearing, in fact, Amy, who was Amy home, who was on your podcast a few weeks ago, talked about a mentor that she had, and he only spent time with people who accepted feedback, right?

00:08:45:03 – 00:08:47:16

Zack Oates

Yes. Wasn’t that such a good insight?

00:08:47:18 – 00:09:08:24

Alice Crowder

Yeah. And I thought that was really brilliant. So I think for us, the operators that come to us and are looking to make an investment in this brand, which is an investment in their business, which is an investment in their legacy, which is an investment in their family, have a lot of pride, take pride in what they do, and so they’re going to deliver that best experience.

00:09:09:01 – 00:09:26:18

Alice Crowder

And when they don’t, because no one’s perfect 100% of the time, right. We have a conversation about it. For us, the biggest part of the guest experience is the quality of the product. So like I said, people had a lower expectation of the quality of what you’re going to get from a convenience store brand, and we turned that on its head.

00:09:26:18 – 00:09:48:24

Alice Crowder

We say, you deserve better. You deserve better. Operator. You deserve a better product to offer your customers. Consumers and my consumers have a little bit less income, a little less education, a little more black, little more brown. They tend to get marginalized in society and taken advantage of. They deserve better. They deserve the highest quality food we can give them at a fair price.

00:09:48:24 – 00:10:08:16

Alice Crowder

And something that tastes great. And in fact, the three top reasons people choose crispy, crunchy and they will drop by somebody else’s gas station to get to us is number one quality, number two value and number three crave ability. So as long as our team is supplying that to our operator partners, we’re doing all right.

00:10:08:18 – 00:10:37:24

Zack Oates

Yeah. Because you really have to look at the sensitivity of value. Value is something that has been a conversation and interesting to note last year, the value complaints industry wide really took a huge increase. Right now. There were so many more complaints about value because everything was going up and up and up in price and people were complaining about shrinkflation as well, that portions were going down and prices were going up.

00:10:38:01 – 00:11:07:20

Zack Oates

And the complaint literally 300% increased complaints and value. And we have seen that decrease, but it’s still not as low as it used to be. Value is still a really big part of it. But the thing is that if you don’t have a great product, they are willing to spend more money to eat out less often and get a better quality thing and a more consistent thing.

00:11:07:22 – 00:11:22:09

Zack Oates

And so I think that’s really important to remember, and I love that you’re talking about not just let’s make it affordable, but let’s make it affordable and let’s make it craveable. Because if you’re missing one of those ingredients, you’re not going to be around for long.

00:11:22:11 – 00:11:43:03

Alice Crowder

You’re not. I think sometimes we talk ourselves into things as marketers and we become more accounting than we should. I love my accounting friends, but I have a our corporate chef has been my corporate chef at 3 or 4 brands now, and we made a pact when we first met that we were going to introduce anything that we wouldn’t be proud to feed our children, and we live by that.

00:11:43:05 – 00:12:05:19

Alice Crowder

So, for example, I just watched some chicken nuggets. We didn’t have chicken nuggets. We introduced them in February. They are big. They are. We’re doing six for 499. They’re about as big as the boneless buffalo wings you would get from some of our fast casual friends, but they’re nuggets and they’re not chopped and formed. They are full muscle.

00:12:06:00 – 00:12:29:10

Alice Crowder

They are white meat. They are high quality. They have this beautiful little tangy marinade and the same thick crunch breading. And they’re delicious. They’re big, they’re meaty. They’re quality, they’re yummy. And you can get six, which is good enough for even a girl like me who clearly loves to eat. It’s pretty good meal for 499. That’s and that’s what we do with everything.

00:12:29:11 – 00:12:36:05

Zack Oates

A big beautiful not bill. What’s the word I’m looking for? Meal. There we go. A big, beautiful meal there. Yeah.

00:12:36:07 – 00:12:52:22

Alice Crowder

But. And our tenders, if you’ve seen our tenders there, I’m doing like this because if you put one in your hands, they’re huge. They’re just shy of four ounces each. You go to competitors. McDonald’s just launched their strips there. They kind of look like mozzarella sticks, right? They’re a little. McDonald’s. I love you all. You egg McMuffin. Any time.

00:12:52:23 – 00:13:02:11

Alice Crowder

Those strips are so good. Like my tenders are these beautiful tenderloins. They’re really big and really meaty. And I challenge you to eat more than 2 or 3 and sitting well.

00:13:02:11 – 00:13:15:17

Zack Oates

Hey. Challenge accepted. Alice, I know I just got to get off my GLP ones first, but thinking about some tactics that restaurants can use to improve the guest experience, what would you say? Some advice that you’d have for other brands?

00:13:15:19 – 00:13:33:01

Alice Crowder

Yeah, for me it really does. Not the harp, but it really does start with the offering and then the authenticity of how you talk about it. We all you know, we all, you know, a lot I eat out a lot. I always ask the server what’s good, what’s bad. A server is not usually going to toe the company line.

00:13:33:03 – 00:13:57:21

Alice Crowder

He or she is going to say, we’re pushing tilapia, but it is nasty. What you really want to get is blah, blah blah. And so you have to, as a restaurateur or marketer, have a product that you’re confident in love and that you’re proud of, and then the people who are charged with delivering it to your end user are going to reflect and magnify that pride.

00:13:57:23 – 00:14:14:13

Alice Crowder

If you tell me to go sell some crappy, I’ll go sell it. But I’m not going to be effusive about it. I’ll be like, I have to sell you this. I mean, if you want to buy it, I wouldn’t buy it. But if you give me something, I’m really proud of them. My dude, you got to take these nuggets.

00:14:14:13 – 00:14:30:23

Alice Crowder

It is going to change your life. It from a nuggets standpoint. And so I think that as marketers we have to think about that and think about the people were asking to deliver our message because they’re not motivated. They’re not I mean, they’re getting minimum wage. They’re not motivated to try to sell something they don’t believe in.

00:14:31:00 – 00:14:57:07

Zack Oates

Yeah. And I think especially because one of the benefits is like, you’ve got people that they really care about their local convenience store. Right? They care about it because they know that their community, 90% of their business is coming from right around them. And so they have to care and they have to create good products. And if they can create, if they have something like crispy, crunchy chicken that someone’s picking up on the way home for dinner, that gives them another reason to stop at their place.

00:14:57:09 – 00:15:10:01

Zack Oates

But I love and I heard you talk about that before, about getting those family dinners. And being a part of that routine is really important. Driving that regularity.

00:15:10:03 – 00:15:36:03

Alice Crowder

You’re reminding me of something I’m supposed to say in every interview, and I always forget. But when people put in a crispy, crunchy, they’re not just making the money from the crispy crunchy. We see that when an operator puts in a crispy crunchy, they’re overall merchandise sales and their overall traffic go up because people see that as an occasion and they see that as a reason to add on a gallon of milk or a six pack of Mountain Dew or what have you.

00:15:36:05 – 00:15:53:19

Alice Crowder

And that’s really important. My own brother, who, you know, I’ve been with this brand almost three years. He’s a plant manager in Gastonia, North Carolina, and last year he called me and said, hey, I checked out Crispy crunchy. And I was like, dude, it’s been two years. Thank God my salary is not based on your adoption rate. But he say it’s so good.

00:15:53:19 – 00:16:07:15

Alice Crowder

And I was like, I told you it was so good. And he’s like, I know, but you know how you are. You get whatever you’re doing, you love it. And so every Monday now, he goes to the same little convenience store owned by this elderly couple. And the woman knows them and she’s like, oh, you’re four drumsticks and a biscuit.

00:16:07:15 – 00:16:20:00

Alice Crowder

And he’s like, I’m here for my four grams. But he’s always picking up a lottery ticket or some fix a flat or whatever else he’s going to pick up, and now they have this regular guess based on this taste experience that they can offer.

00:16:20:02 – 00:16:30:08

Zack Oates

I love that. Now, Alice, this is going to be the hardest question of your day because you know, everyone. But who is someone in the restaurant industry that deserves an ovation?

00:16:30:10 – 00:16:52:15

Alice Crowder

Some people have heard me talk about this before, but I have been involved in business with a guy named Jason Abel cop for a long time. I worked for him for a long time. He was a mentor of mine. He’s also now just a friend of mine, and we use his agency, Plein Air. I think plein air in particular, and Jason especially understand the restaurant industry better than anybody else.

00:16:52:17 – 00:17:11:16

Alice Crowder

They do a lot of stuff, but they specialize in restaurants, small and mid-sized restaurants. They understand and they understand the economics and the insights that drive it. And whenever I’m thinking through a thorny problem, I have an idea. I call Jace and say, this is what I’m thinking, and he helps me contextualize it the way he does for all his clients.

00:17:11:16 – 00:17:33:11

Alice Crowder

He also has a head of analytics, and a lot of marketers don’t embrace analytics the way I wish they would. Or actually, I hope they don’t because it’s at their peril. Named Karen Anderson, who’s particularly brilliant and helps you understand your pricing position and how your digital side works or doesn’t works and helps you just get the math right.

00:17:33:13 – 00:17:36:07

Alice Crowder

And I think more people should talk to them.

00:17:36:08 – 00:17:57:00

Zack Oates

That is the only, as I tell people it’s called, it’s plain air, and that is the only IPA that I take because that is love what they do. Great group. I’m actually fortunate enough to occasionally be able to hang out with them on a podcast that we host. So Jason, his co-CEO, Abhinav Kapoor, and I, we do a podcast, talk about the industry trends.

00:17:57:00 – 00:18:10:14

Zack Oates

And anyway, it’s fun to connect and learn from him because, yes, totally agree him. And it’s plain theirs is phenomenal. Now, the easiest question that you will get all week is where do we go to find and follow you? And crispy crunchy chicken. Yeah.

00:18:10:14 – 00:18:32:23

Alice Crowder

So we’re all over the socials. It’s at crispy crunchy chicken. We’re also you can go to our website which is crispy crunchy.com. There’s a great store locator on there if you don’t know where your local one is. We’re happy to direct you on it. And please follow us. We have a lot of fun. We don’t take ourselves seriously and would love to share more of who we are with people however they want to engage with us.

00:18:33:00 – 00:18:40:11

Zack Oates

Awesome! Well thanks Alice and for giving us a bit of crispy happiness on the way home. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Giving Ovation.

00:18:40:13 – 00:18:42:18

Alice Crowder

Thank you man I really appreciate it.

00:18:42:20 – 00:19:05:07

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovationup.com.