About Big Chicken

Founded by basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, Big Chicken blends bold flavors with big personality and a big mission: to deliver craveable comfort food in a fun, franchise-forward model. As the 30-location brand rapidly expands (300+ units in development), maintaining consistent guest experiences across locations has become mission-critical.

Early Results – Simple Data Leads to Operational Improvements

Early on Big Chicken chose Ovation for its simplicity, real-time feedback, and easy guest experience, which has led to over 2,000 surveys/month.

“It’s simple for a guest to use. It’s unobtrusive.” – Josh Halpern

Ovation’s AI-powered insights and franchise-friendly dashboard helped the team quickly identify trends and opportunities for improvement.

One example: guests frequently mentioned missing sauces in to-go orders. Ovation helped flag this as a recurring issue—so Big Chicken implemented a new checklist system with tamper-evident stickers to increase order accuracy.

Guest Recovery That Drives Revenue

“It’s really great having that two-way communication to allow you to talk to the guest one-on-one because you often don’t get to, right? Not until it’s too late….”

Josh ran some numbers:

“If we get someone to come back once a year, four times a year, or every week, that’s potentially $1,200 a year from just one guest,” Halpern explained. “Isn’t that worth one minute of your time?”

So far Big Chicken has brought back over 1300 guests through Ovation.

Franchise Health Metrics At a Glance

Ovation scores are now part of Big Chicken’s weekly board meetings. “We’re constantly looking at what trends are happening throughout the system to help us strengthen the franchise network,” said Halpern.