My first introduction to the company was when Jarrod called. He explained he was the Chef, Operations and Training Manager for Chicken Express. We had been looking for something to add to the business and what Jarrod said about what Chicken Express does caught my attention. Jarrod then introduced me to Terry and Jodie at the Metcash Expo and from there we organised to meet on-site at Gulgong for a presentation of the product.

I liked the idea and concept. I started talking to other retailers who already had the product like Peter Trappel who had it in a few of his sites and Kevin from Bathurst. I went to Bathurst to try the product and absolutely loved it! My brother and I found ourselves looking for excuses to go to Bathurst just so we could eat it! Seriously, I thought the product might be something like KFC but I was wrong. The chicken was like on another level!
I sat down with Peter and Kevin and we looked at the numbers. There was seriously good money in it and I knew we had a great opportunity for it in both my Kandos and Gulgong stores.

Definitely the profit. But also the timing of it all. We were ready to do something different. We thought we would put it in Kandos first but there is a bit of work to do in that store to accommodate it. We had started to refurbish the ‘fresh’ section of the Gulgong store and because we were excited to get the chicken in as quickly as we could, we thought why not accommodate for Chicken Express in the plans of our refurbishment.

I believed it could give us extra sales to what people were already buying. But I didn’t think it would give us the amount of extra sales that it has. It is going so well that I have had to add extra resources to the area to cope.

From the numbers I had seen of Peter & Kevin’s systems, I believed we could possibly achieve $4k - $4.5k. Although sales have settled down a bit, we are still achieving more than what we expected. Sitting at around $6.5 - $7k per week.

Chicken Express has definitely lived up to my expectation. I knew what to expect as having tried the product, I knew it was obviously going to taste good. As far as how the system has performed, it has definitely exceeded what I believed we could do. My only challenge that I have with it at the moment is trying to find a butcher in my area that can consistently supply and cut the right size chicken.

I don’t know what I expected but what surprised me more than anything was how relatively simple and straight forward it is to operate. There is little room for error. The training was excellent but with all the systems and procedures and the automation of the equipment, it’s just so easy to produce! I don’t know that I expected it to be hard but it really is so simple! We were a bit overwhelmed with it at first but that was only because it was new and we were bombarded by customers! In hindsight, we probably won’t be advertising it on Facebook at first when we install it into our Kandos store. (laughs) I think we’ll wait til the staff have it down-pat.

It started selling straight away. It just took off! Even on the training day when we weren’t really selling it but just learning the process of cooking it. We couldn’t keep up with customers lining up to buy it.

It absolutely does! We generally start between 8am and 9am and just load the display up fully. It sells all day but the peak times are the lunch and dinner trade.

It’s hard to qualify because of the Coronavirus. That alone has changed the buying habits of customers. But we do have a lot of repeat customers coming in for the product. We sell to a lot of miners and families. Some will come in through the day and get their shopping and buy Chicken Express for a snack or a meal and then they’ll come back in the early evening and buy it as a takeaway meal for the family dinner. Some will come in and order what they want for when they leave the store. Then they’ll do the loop and get their shopping and then call in on the way out to pick up their order.

We have new customers. We have people that come from Mudgee to buy it! Our floor traffic is also up though at the moment because of the (Coronavirus) climate.

We get really good feedback. In a small town where everyone just about knows everyone, word travels around fast. We have a hands on approach in our businesses and we deal one to one with a lot of our customers. They don’t mind telling you when they like and don’t like something. We mostly get told that the chicken is better than KFC. They love it because it’s not oily and it tastes fresh.

It integrates really well being attached to our “fresh” and Deli areas. Because it’s in an area that is already dealing with ‘fresh’ food. My deli staff are already ‘food handling’ trained and that is what they are doing with the other delicatessen products that we sell. So prepping and handling the Chicken Express products is not out of their league. The Chicken Express operation also makes better use of the resources in that area.

I was very happy with the training. Jarrod was excellent! We had a ‘train the trainer’ approach to it all and ensured that Jarrod had the complete attention of a couple of key people rather than all of the staff. This seemed to work really well. But because we were bombarded by customers for the product and it was all so vey new for us, Jarrod found it difficult to train us in all of the products. So he focused on just helping us to keep up to the demand and getting us competent in just the main products. Once we have that down-pat, he will then organise to train us in the other products we have yet to learn to produce.
- Talked about Jarrod arriving a bit earlier before training to set up the equipment as Ghaz said they were trying to handle and install equipment they were unfamiliar with.
- Talked about preparing people with recommendations for extra prep space as Ghaz feels they should have provided more allowance in the plans for preparation bench.
- Talked about providing photos for people of how it is installed in a deli area.

Yes we felt very confident. Jarrod drilled the training into us, so we were very confident in how to produce it. It was the customer demand that we had to get accustomed to. We weren’t prepared for that so we had to tweak our own resources to be able to meet the high end demand straight up.

The back up and support from the company is outstanding! Even after the installation and training, everyone was still holding our hand. I mean Jarrod was back within a couple of weeks to give us a refresher re-train and everyone else within the company makes themselves available to us.

Funnily enough it has. Terry talked a lot about providing a meal-in-a-box. Or a meal solution. Because we have what I would call other meal solutions in store, I was quite sceptical when he used to talk about the value of this and that we had a ‘need’ for it. But he was right! This really is a meal in a box. It really does attract a market I didn’t think we had. It really does capture that ‘impulse’ buy that wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have it. I mean even the staff are buying it to eat at work or take home. It doesn’t matter where the sale comes from. It’s still a sale. And an add-on sale that wouldn’t happen without it.

It actually has. In this game you always think that when they leave the store that you have pretty much tapped everything you could out of them. You always think they won’t want to spend any more. But I know now that that’s not true. They actually will spend more and they do more regularly. The Chicken Express product has proven that to me now.

Chicken Express has had an extremely positive effect on our business. It really is an add-on business as it’s added an opportunity we didn’t know we had and weren’t taking advantage of before. In particular in this time where we are dealing with the impact of the Coronavirus where pubs and clubs are all shut down and the only meals you can buy are takeaway meals. In this small country town we have had a very positive response from the community as we can offer them a takeaway take home product. And we are tapping into a market that we wouldn’t be able to if we didn’t have Chicken Express.

Probably not. The system is excellent.

Depends on the store. But based on our success, I am only too happy to talk to anyone to recommend Chicken Express.