About the Guest

Chas Hermann is a retail brand and marketing leader with experience in Fortune 500 companies including Noodles & Company, Starbucks, Disney, and Universal Studios. Chas is the Chief Brand Officer at Noodles & Company. Previous experience in the restaurant industry includes time at Papa Murphy’s and Del Taco.

Episode Summary

Chas Hermann, Chief Brand Officer at Noodles & Company, shares how a menu revamp that included game-changing zucchini noodles led to a 4.6% increase in same store sales and arguably the 457-unit chain’s turnaround.

Episode Transcript

Zach Goldstein:

00:01

From fake meat and robot chefs, to ghost kitchens and delivery drones, the restaurant industry is rapidly evolving. Welcome to Food Fighters, bringing you interviews with the leading industry trailblazers. I’m your host, Zach Goldstein.

Zach Goldstein:

00:18

This is Zach Goldstein. Welcome to the Food Fighters podcast. I’m here with Chas Hermann. Chas is a retail brand and marketing leader with experience in fortune 500 companies including Noodles & Company, Starbucks, Disney and Universal Studios. Chas is currently the Chief Brand Officer at Noodles & Company with previous restaurant experience including time at Papa Murphy’s and Del Taco. Really excited to welcome you to the Food Fighters podcast Chas, thanks for your time.

Chas Hermann:

00:47

Hey Zach it’s great to be here I’m glad to have a chance to chat with you.

Zach Goldstein:

00:52

So we’d like to kick things off. You know, some restaurant executives were destined for the restaurant industry, others stumbled into it. What turned you into a Food Fighter?

Chas Hermann:

01:01

Well, I didn’t set out to get to the restaurant industry. Actually, it developed a relationship that I had while I was working at Disney, with some of the strategic planning and one of the folks I worked with had moved on to Starbucks and they brought me over to Starbucks to help them build out the product management, the category management function, and really help support the product development with really good analytics and thinking about the business side as well as just the creative side.

Zach Goldstein:

01:29

Fantastic. And at Noodles you’re charged with developing and executing the company’s marketing menu and culinary strategies. That has included a pretty famously at this point, a game changing launch of zucchini noodles that really has been a factor in, in the chains turnaround and massive growth. Would love to hear more about that and maybe tell us the story. What led down that path, uh and, and how did you think about the need to, to do that type of innovation?

Chas Hermann:

02:01

Yeah, well, I mean, first first Noodles is just a really, really interesting experience. And you know, the role of Chief Brand Officer was designed such that you know, as much as it was about marketing, it was equally about culinary development as well as steward design. So it was really to get into the experience of the brand and think about it holistically across all the disciplines. And so that was really important what they were looking for and the role that I think would have made great sense for me to help bring the brand to the next level. This is a brand, that’s almost 25 years old at this point. And it started on the notion of, you know, thinking how could we bring different kinds of noodles together under one roof and actually, you know, create a noodle experience or define a category of noodles that didn’t exist.

Chas Hermann:

02:45

And you know, as the story goes, there was some struggles with the brand a few years back and it sort of got distracted. This low carb notion showed up and it really put a lot of pressure on the concept of noodles, the product of noodles. And you know, lot of times when businesses go through challenges, sometimes they lose sight of what they stand for and, and that’s a risk to the brand. So they started thinking about sandwiches. They started thinking about you know, products that didn’t have noodles in them and they really sort of lost sight. So what we did you know, in, in the last couple of years is, is refocus the company and the brand and the team on what it is you can uniquely own in the space of noodles. So we looked at the performance of the business, you know, we understood we’ve had classic dishes like Penne Rosa.

Chas Hermann:

03:36

We’ve had a really great lineup of mac and cheeses that had done really well. But knowing that we had this challenge around carbs, we had to create a, you know, sort of a foray or an intro or a way for guests to get these great, you know, world global flavors, but in a way that they wanted to, to, to actually experience those. And that’s what created this idea around zucchini noodles, which are referred to as “zoodles”. And that led us to a place where we thought about the category of noodles across four major platforms: classic noodles that you see, you know, you think about today cause it’s still, you know, it’s still a really big part of the business. Certainly in the famous macs. We also have some really great Asian noodle dishes. And then we introduced a fourth platform which was zoodles and other noodles, which allowed us to take it from zucchini spiralized zucchini, which is spiralized fresh every single day to new products like the one that was just launched a few weeks ago, which is what we’re calling “caulifloodles” or a cauliflower-infused rigatoni.

Chas Hermann:

04:37

And the the runway beyond that is sort of endless, which is one of the great things about the noodle platform and sort of the development of R and D around, you know, food science. It’s, it’s this… What makes sense about this is it becomes true to what the brand stands for and guests can see that. They can understand that. So they look to you as an authority. This is an authority around noodles. It’s redefining what that category can be and bring it to them in a way that they can choose how they want to use noodles cause they can take any noodle and use it in any recipe. So suddenly the power is shifted back to the guests and they get to make the decisions. And that’s sort of the short story of the repositioning, if you will. It’s a bit broader than that in terms of carrying it through all the disciplines. But I think that’s the genesis that makes it believable and makes it of interest to customers. And to guests.

Zach Goldstein:

05:29

It’s fascinating. And one of the challenges industry-wide is the concept of product innovation and how you drive that into your brand positioning in your marketing. And the question is where do you start? Do you start with an innovative product and then figure out how to adjust your brand and your marketing around that? Or do you identify a business need and a uniqueness of your brand and drive that into your product? Was there a direction here that you went or, or it was happening kind of in parallel?

Chas Hermann:

06:01

Well, I mean I think you start with what is it that the guest is looking for that you may not be satisfying today? Or what is the additional guests that aren’t using your brand that you could satisfy? And I think that’s what that insight led us to: we need to do something. The question there becomes, what do you do? Do you chase what’s available in the marketplace or trends today? Or do you find and discover and R and D a product that reinforces the brand? And I think that’s, that’s, that’s the insight that, you know, oftentimes brands struggle, struggle to find. So you have the insight of the challenge, you’re looking for products to bring forward that will answer that challenge, but how do you do it in a way that continues to deepen and reinforce why you are the leader in that space?

Chas Hermann:

06:49

And so I think it’s as subtle as that is in some ways. And of course the complexity in R and D to actually do that isn’t always easy. But that was worth the effort. You know, and I, I’ll tell you first going into zucchini and zoodles, there was definitely a little bit of hesitation and concern across the organization about, you know, would this, you know, is this really a noodle? But it didn’t take long at all after it was launched when people really started to understand the power of the spiralized zucchini noodle in the Noodles brand and the opportunity or the door that opened that, what could we do beyond that? You know, are there additional vegetables that can be spiralized? Can we infuse you know, vegetables into -to noodles. I mean, it’s just, but the notion here is that if you focus on what it is, people believe you’re best at and you take it up a notch, you’re only going to deepen the connection in the relationship. You know, with your guests and you’re going to grow your, you’re going to grow your population, you’re going to grow your traffic.

Zach Goldstein:

07:50

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, there’s, there’s been some information that your CEO credited the 450 plus unit chain turnaround which is about 4.6% increase in same store sales largely with this product innovation. So that is the definition of a success as far as I’m concerned. And there aren’t very many restaurants that make such a bold move and see that type of results within, within a couple of years. Congratulations.

Chas Hermann:

08:20

Yeah, no, it was a lot of work, but it’s actually been a lot of fun, especially when you start to see it resonate, which is exactly what’s happening.

Zach Goldstein:

08:26

Do you find that they are largely new customers or churned customers, lapse customers returning to the brand for the new product or are people mixing zoodles and vegetable-based noodles into their you know, dining mix if you will, and, and shifting back and forth?

Chas Hermann:

08:47

Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, initially when you roll, I mean Noodles is a relatively small brand, you know, a $455 million branch. So there’s not a ton of sort of marketing resources to get messaging out. So you generally start you know, with in-store, in-restaurant communications, you broaden that a bit with some digital that we have through various programs. So you first start to see a couple of things happen. You see, guests, that may have come with their families that maybe were choosing something else or weren’t eating at the time now finding an option. So actually existing guests sort of compilations beginning to broaden. And we did see that. You see lapsed users who’ve always loved the brand, loved the flavor, but for some reason from a dietary perspective, their lifestyle, they’ve chosen to go in a slightly different direction. Now they could come back in and consume these great flavors again.

Chas Hermann:

09:40

And then the third sort of tier that you see is new guests that looked at the brand and just when they saw Noodles and said, “that’s probably carb-based, I’m not interested” now had a reason that they could come and experience this brand and at the same time answer a concern that they had from a dietary lifestyle perspective or what they call “personalized nutrition”. So we actually saw all three and I think it’s the third that continues to grow longer. You know, last, we’ll come back a little bit faster, but those that get introduced to it, I think that’s, that becomes the biggest opportunity going forward.

Zach Goldstein:

10:16

It’s fantastic. As you think about figuring out those insights and understanding who are the new guests and understanding are you driving incremental spending from existing guests… You have an asset in that you have a very large robust loyalty program. How do you use that data to understand who those guests are and create moments of personalization at scale? And maybe I’ll ask you a second point of that, which is, and what are you not doing yet that you really wish you could with understanding guest data and using it to deliver those unique experiences outside the four walls?

Chas Hermann:

10:53

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you this, one of the things we also just recently did as part of this turnaround is we relaunched the, we actually have a new app. We have a new ordering process to make it easier for the guests to be able to define, identify and create orders simply that makes sense for them. Before using the third party app. It was a good app, but it wasn’t quite what made it easy for our guests to, to sort of use the brand. So that’s, that’s been a big part of what, you know, recently has created even bigger opportunities for us to go deeper into the data. But we were always able to go into the data that we had and we weren’t always able to link it all the way through to POS. They were sort of separate systems. This future direction we’re going allows us to bring it all together.

Chas Hermann:

11:36

So, a lot of the insights that we would get even through, you know, the, the program that we had before the launch of the new program. You know, we would sort of mirror that with some insights we’d get through research, whether it be focus groups or just, you know, various types of input that you get, knowing that there’s this gap out there that you can sort of fill. So, you know, you can imagine if it’s as broad as I’m looking for something that may be more on the paleo or keto or these low-carb type directions, and pretty easy to identify, that’s pretty big. As you take data and you take you know, data from POS, we can really see what customers are doing, how they’re behaving within transactions, and you’re matching it with, you know, customer data, demographic data. You can go a lot deeper than just broadly “what kind of noodles do I want”.

Chas Hermann:

12:27

You can begin to start to explore for flavors. So I think, again, that’s a horizon that’s in front of the brand. That all of this was thought of as we’ve launched into this, this new digital program that will give us much, much deeper, richer and faster, easier to get at you know, information. In the past, you were linking systems together and you know what that’s like Zach, when you have to do that, it’s difficult to do it really well and really fast and really meaningfully. And you tend to look at bigger trends versus a bit more targeted, personalized focused trends that will now be afforded to the brand.

Zach Goldstein:

13:03

Yeah, I mean we find that often that it can be challenging to cobble different data sources and different systems together and most restaurant teams, either marketing or IT just aren’t set up for it. And so it can be very, very draining to do. And so to have all of that data at your fingertips in-house allows you to start doing some of these flavor profiling and product profiling to get much more personalized. I think that’s, I think that’s fantastic.

Zach Goldstein:

13:27

Have you seen your business digitize are you seeing more and more consumers because of the customizability of your product? Because of the fact that people want it exactly the way they want it? Is it easier for them to order through digital channels and therefore they’re kind of flocking to that? How significant has that change been?

Chas Hermann:

13:49

You know, it is interesting because I think, you know, intuitively you would believe that if I can, I can literally create the order myself digitally, call it on an app or online through interface, through the web, the likelihood of me being assured that what I want went into the POS goes up significantly. So there’s no doubt about that. I don’t have to worry about whether she behind the, you know, the POS and behind the register got my order right. So I’m confident that it gets into the system and if it’s in the system, then it’s very likely to make it to the kitchen, so the odds of it getting made more accurately goes up. Unbelievable. The, the, the one insight that we learned through some of the research we’ve done through some focus groups is there’s this notion of customization or what ingredients do I want or don’t want in my, in my meal and my dish, my entree.

Chas Hermann:

14:40

But there’s this nuance that I really had never thought about, which is and of how much of that do I want? And that’s one of the things that you see in some of these businesses. Think about a Subway where there’s a line, think about a Chipotle or where there’s a line or you’re literally communicating with the creator of your meal that is a step further than pure just, you know, sort of creating your own order entry. And I find that interesting. I don’t know where that will lead digitally. And do you go to that level of customization? Can you allow them to have partials? But it is fascinating that as the guest begins to be able to engage in the actual creation of what they’re going to get, their attachment to it, their desire and their expectations also go up. But there’s no doubt that, you know, I mean, and everything we do even beyond food personalization, customization is only gonna grow, become more meaningful, and brands that don’t do it I think are going to struggle. And so I think it’s, it’s a requirement. I think it’s the how you do it.

Zach Goldstein:

15:45

Yeah. The, the modifiers that are, “I want a couple mushrooms added to my zoodles and I want it to be medium spicy with chili flakes” is hard to get across through a digital platform.

Chas Hermann:

15:59

Yeah. And I’ll tell you if those folks, you know, and I don’t know what the percentage of them are, but whatever that number is, those are the ones that are least likely to use delivery.

Zach Goldstein:

16:08

Well, you transition actually into the next, which is the other element of product development that now restaurants have to take into account, is, does my food travel? And how do I think about a world where increasingly my food is being consumed off-premise perhaps five minutes after it was prepared, but outside the restaurant or perhaps 45 minutes after it was prepared? When you’re thinking about such a major product launch like zucchini noodles, how did you go about evaluating will this product travel? Should we be pushing it for off-premise? What is the, how does it compare to the more traditional noodle dish? Were those factors in consideration as you’re going through the test kitchen and ultimately even the, the launch of the product?

Chas Hermann:

16:55

Yeah, there’s no doubt there were certainly factors in, factors in all of the dishes that we, that we offer. The good news is noodles our, our noodle product… They actually travel very, very well. The packaging we have is, is, is fantastic for keeping and retaining heat without actually sort of destroying the dish with the heat that it retains. So noodles as a, as a product do travel really well. I think better than, than a lot than a lot of you know, products that travel. Zucchini, interestingly enough, travels well. I think one of the challenges that we were working through is when you go to a sort of a bigger element, think about catering, you know, something that might sit there longer and be heated longer, you know, in a catering environment. That’s where we see sometimes, is, you know, a vegetable like zoodles a bit more challenged and it’s where a cauliflower infused rigatoni, which behaves a lot like, and tolerability is a lot like a traditional noodle, that tends to perform a little bit better. So on the individual level, there’s no issues at all. Once you get to the broader which there’s still a little bit of work to tweak it on up.

Zach Goldstein:

18:04

Q&A with the restaurant industry’s leading disruptor. This is Food Fighters, the podcast.

Zach Goldstein:

18:13

Well you recently wrote an article, Chas, and I wanted to switch, switch to that about the three categories of brand experiences. And you talked about functional, emotional and immersive. This is a great way to break it down. And I think it’s a structure that a lot of brands struggle with. The kind of amorphous idea of “what is a brand?”. Help us understand, in a few minutes what, how you think about those different elements of a brand and how you apply it in the actual marketing product development and customer engagement pieces of your day-to-day job.

Chas Hermann:

18:46

This is something that I’ve been able to learn through a lot of these great brands that I’ve been afforded to be part of the, of the teams along the way. Whether it’s Disney… Cause it doesn’t matter whether it’s food or entertainment, whether it’s Starbucks, certainly Noodles and many of the of the different companies that I’ve worked with, from a consulting perspective. But I mean first and foremost, products have to perform functionally. It’s sort of the price of admission, right? Everybody knows what that looks like. You think about CPG that way. It could be your toothpaste, it could be your shampoo, you know, you don’t get real excited unless it doesn’t perform the way either you expect it to or it has been for you over time. So you know, pretty simple level. The second level, and this has been around for ages, is how do we get folks to be emotionally connected to the product?

Chas Hermann:

19:32

So advertising is a great way to do it, where you start to create this sense of what is the situation or occasion that someone’s going to use it get, get customers to see themselves in that same situation. So advertising plays a role there. Service when people engage, think about Chick-fil-A has got a great guest service model. Starbucks has a really great guest service model. That’s part of the emotional, emotional connection. And so it takes it from sort of, you know, a bit more to, you know, what you need, to, how it begins to make you feel. But there’s these few brands and you can think of them, they, they’re, they’re, they’re obvious. You know, Disney’s a great example. Starbucks, Nike, Chipotle has done it really well. Patagonia is a great example that, beyond how it makes me feel, it begins to define who I am.

Chas Hermann:

20:21

So it’s, it’s, I relate to this brand, not just because of the product, but often because of what the company stands for, how the company shows up, what it does, but equally what it doesn’t do. So it doesn’t chase what the newest trend and shiny object is because it’s a trend and it’s a shiny object. It might go after it and define it in its own way because it reinforces the brand. Think again. Zoodles, you’re going after that “plant-based zoodles better for you, zoodles and other noodles” platform and doing it in a way that elevates the brand. That’s a really, really great example. And there’s a number of examples along the way that you can think of where brands have had to make decisions on, you know, on, on what do we do that will reinforce that relationship. Because when it gets too immersive, it’s very personal, right?

Chas Hermann:

21:10

And it’s a bit like the patch you might wear on your jacket. It’s, it’s an emblem in some ways that begins to show other people what you believed. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s where you want to push every brand. And I would argue, today, it’s more important than ever. Not just to do it, but to do it truthfully and authentically. Because with social media, if you don’t, you’ll get destroyed instantly. Because you know, we’ve always said brands are owned by the, by the guest, by the consumer, but they’ve never before had the tools they have to determine whether you’re actually doing it or not. And today, you know, between Instagram, between, you know, what is it, TicTok, Facebook, Snapchat, I mean this is just a growing… This, this will, this will not stop. That’s where it lives. And the beauty is when you get it right, you think about word of mouth marketing, they’ve got the platform. If you’re, if you’re true to the, to the cause and the belief, that’s really where you drive growth, because that’s who they’re going to believe. So that’s how I think about it. You know, in just a few minutes here, but it’s super powerful. It’s super important and it’s not, it sounds easy to everybody to do it, but it’s not always that easy because it’s equally what you don’t do that will, that will literally dilute or

errode what you stand for, even though it might in the short term, create business success. That’s always the challenge.

Zach Goldstein:

22:35

How does a brand know when they’re starting to make that leap into being an immersive brand? What are signs of success where you can kind of feel the energy building that you’re, you’re achieving that next level?

Chas Hermann:

22:48

Well, one: you will start to see the social, the social media world light up. Two, you know, you start to become, you know, sort of popular. You’ll see it on late night shows. You’ll hear, you know, you remember the sayings, you know, a Starbucks opened up across the street from the Starbucks. It becomes bigger than the brand itself because it begins to the define a lifestyle and you know, and, and it’s, it’s easy for you to say it and everybody understands what you’re talking about. So it tends to really become the story starting to be told by not just the brand anymore, but by the guests through social, by media outlets, you know that, to talk about social expression, you know, it just, it literally is bigger than the brand itself. And Nike does a great job at it. I think Patagonia does an amazing job at it. I said Chipotle has certain plays in the space. But I think, you know, it has to be, you know, it has to be a truth there that the everybody in the company believes, the service reinforces it, the products surround it, you know, the environment, you know, just alludes it, it all has to come together so that the guests, because the guest isn’t going to tell an advertising story ever, they will tell a brand truth. So that’s how you usually know though: the echo that comes back to you versus the voice you’re sending out.

Zach Goldstein:

24:07

I like that a lot. So this is the Food Fighters podcast. So I bring on innovative leaders in the industry and asked you now to look forward. What is the food fight that is coming? What is the topic that you think broadly the restaurant industry needs to be turning its attention to that you’d like to see more people talk about in forums like this?

Chas Hermann:

24:28

They really need to focus on void, avoiding letting the business become commoditized. When you think about all of these avenues, think about third party delivery. When you think about, you know, online ordering where the experience is happening away from the brand it’s really important that as you move into those spaces which are highly beneficial to the business, can be profitable, there’s some challenges to that depending on the channel. How do you continue to show up reinforcing the brand so that you don’t become commoditized? Because the more brands or products or product lines become commoditized, the easier it is for, you know, other venues, other avenues, other channels. You know, you’ve heard the notion of ghost kitchens, you know, this idea of third party creating sort of their own products that play in the same space because a burger’s a burger, a sandwich is a sandwich, pizza’s pizza. When you, when the brand becomes commoditized, the value from the guest’s mind is only the product that they get versus the experience that they associate with the product that they get. Or even take a brand like Starbucks where it’s 80, 85% of their products leave their restaurant. But the beauty of it is even when that guest leaves, you know, the, the, the, the cafe, what, the feeling that they take with them that the product that they have is the experience of connection that they created in the space, even if it’s going through a pickup window. And I think that’s what brands, sometimes they lose sight of it because it’s very difficult to measure in the short term. You can easily measure it in the longterm with growth of traffic and sort of as we were talking about a little bit earlier, a sort of social feedback that suggests this is a brand that I love, not just like, I love.

Zach Goldstein:

26:13

Yeah. I mean when the food shows up at your doorstep, it’s begging to be pushed into that functional category that you were mentioning. Right? You’re not getting the emotional or certainly not the immersive experience. And, and so brands to think about what does it mean to transcend to that more emotional or immersive brand experience? Even when people are enjoying my product in different ways, in different places, at different times that that does feel like there’s a, there’s a major question mark on who’s going to emerge as best in class on that?

Chas Hermann:

26:47

And we know that, right, 70 to 80% or higher of these guests that are ordering food that’s being delivered to them have had an experience in restaurant. They don’t, you typically don’t just pick a restaurant you’ve never been to. So they’ve already demonstrated that they’re interested in not just the product but the entire model, the entire experience. How do you take some of that and bring it forward so that it’s sort of surprise and delight when it gets to them and it makes them think about that experience? And that’s difficult, especially in a channel like delivery where margins are already pressured and challenged. But I would argue if you want to win in the long term, and if you believe that’s an incremental layer to your business, you might want to invest just a little bit more to bring forward, not just uniqueness and difference, but reinforcement of the brand that they love and why they went to you first in the first place from a delivery choice. And so I think that’s critical. I think that’s again, how you get to immersive versus just, you know, a functional or even an emotive brand.

Zach Goldstein:

27:48

That’s fantastic. Well Chas, I greatly appreciate the time. For me, this, this welcoming you onto this first season of the Food Fighters podcast is pretty exciting because the answer to how I got into the restaurant space is learning from people like you. The first restaurant I ever worked at when I was a consultant, I got the benefit of working side by side with you and learning about some of the innovative stuff that you were doing in marketing. And now I look back more than a decade later and I think it’s your fault that I’m in this industry.

Zach Goldstein:

28:21

So thanks for spending the time with me today. I very much appreciate it and excited to see what you, and what Noodles & Company as well, do over the next couple of years in this really innovative space.

Chas Hermann:

28:33

Great Zach, I, I’ll never forget the relationship that we developed back then and I’m glad that it continues today and I love what you’re doing because you are on the side of making sure people recognize that, thanking them for what they do, it matters. It makes a difference and you’ve built a real nice business, so I’m excited that we’re, that we get to partner and do something like this. It’s fantastic.

Zach Goldstein:

28:56

Thanks for joining Chas. Super excited to have you on Food fighters.

Chas Hermann:

28:59

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. I’m excited about the discussion.

Zach Goldstein:

29:04

You’ve been listening to Food Fighters with me, Zach Goldstein. To subscribe to the podcast or to learn more about our featured guests, visit thanx.com/food-fighters. That’s “Thanx” spelled T H A N X .com/food-fighters. This podcast is a production of Thanx, the leading CRM and digital engagement solution for restaurants. Until next time, keep fighting Food Fighters.