McAlister's Deli: Marketing KPIs That Matter Most

We asked Natalia Franco, CMO at McAlister's Deli, what marketing KPIs are most important to her brand, and why.

Like most restaurants and other consumer-focused brands, business performance KPIs like sales, comp sales, traffic, and profit are among some of the most important for McAlister's Deli. This is because these metrics help us to quantify our growth and success. Historically, we have been very successful in these areas, having top-tier AUVs in the industry and rapid system growth over the past several years.

However, when it comes to marketing specifically, we have core measurements for McAlister's brand health that, in addition to business performance metrics, also look at things such as market share, EBITDA, and general brand awareness. With the unveiling of our brand evolution and restaurant redesign in 2018, we began looking at ways to refine our marketing KPIs - and how we defined success going beyond performance.

Some of these KPIs are brand love, which aims to measure consumers' sentiment for McAlister's; consideration, which goes beyond brand awareness to where a consumer knows your brand and has a desire to engage with it; and overall guest satisfaction, a key indicator for how we are performing operationally in our restaurants. By looking at this information, we can see where we are thriving and connecting with our guests, and at the areas we should give more attention to and improve.

In addition, we benefit from being part of our parent company, Focus Brands, which has seven food-related franchises under its umbrella, including two other restaurant brands, Moe's Southwest Grill and Schlotzsky's. Being part of the same family, we've been able to compare our KPIs and share consumer insight metrics, which has provided us with the opportunity to drive synergies across all the concepts and excel within the greater portfolio.

From a marketing perspective, digital activation in the restaurant space has become the most important area for us to look at, with many brands offering fans interactive mobile apps and robust loyalty/reward programs. We've learned that consumers desire to access brands in a very different way than they have previously and are demanding more offerings. At this time, we are very aggressively in the midst of a full digital transformation for McAlister's Deli and are looking at all areas, including our loyalty program, mobile app, online ordering, and more.