There's a Reason Chili's Is All Over Your FYP
An interview with Jack Hailey, Social Media Manager at Chili's, who worked in-restaurant for 7 years as a host, bartender, and server.
If you’re seeing Chili’s everywhere, you aren’t alone.
Food reviewer Dylan McArthur’s triple dipper videos have gone viral consistently, with other creators crediting him in their own viral videos.
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Alix Earle recently documented her trip to Chili’s here.
Kevin Hochman, CEO of Chili’s parent company Brinker International, says that the Triple Dipper going viral on TikTok accounted for roughly 40% of the chain’s sales growth this past quarter.
We don’t talk about it enough, but when your company is going viral on TikTok (for good reasons), it boosts your brand’s owned channels. You show up in search results. You get fed into the FYP. It's like a digital fast lane. All of a sudden, your brand is part of the cultural conversation.
This is due to what I like to call Feedback Loop Virality. There’s a point of inflection where suddenly talking about your brand becomes a tool for creator views—with people ordering and documenting their experience to hopefully catch a ride on the viral wave.
It’s likely why Alix Earle went to Chili’s in the first place or recently talked about her Chipotle order—both not sponsored and posted during a time where she’s likely trying to get her numbers up. We’ve seen it happen with Joe & The Juice’s Tunacado, Milk Makeup’s jelly tint, and Wingstop’s chicken tenders.
Right now, Chili’s is in the very enviable position of that digital fast lane. Luckily Jack Hailey, Social Media Manager at Chili's, has seized the opportunity. For today’s newsletter, I chatted with Jack about how his 7 years as a host, bartender, and server at Chili’s has informed his role as Social Media Manager, why the brand’s CMO told him to “take big swings”, and all the secrets to their stellar outbound community management strategy.
Rachel Karten? First, can you tell me about your current role and the previous roles you've had?
Jack Hailey: In my current role, I lead social media, community engagement, and influencer under my boss, Luz Infante Bickert who is the Director of Digital Advertising.
I actually started with Chili’s almost 10 years ago as a host at my local restaurant. I worked in-restaurant for 7 years as a host, bartender, server, basically everything you can do in the restaurant (except a cook, you don’t want me cooking, ever.) I credit a ton of my success in social to being in-restaurant so long. There’s no better way to understand a brand than actually serving its guests day in and day out.
From there I knew I wanted to stay in the restaurant business and got a job in HR right out of college at Chili’s corporate. I knew HR wasn’t end-goal for me, so luckily my boss Luz poached me, and the rest is history!
RK: I’ve heard you talk about how you're "re-igniting Chili’s back to culture through trending social media". Can you give me the elevator pitch of what that means and how you're going about that?
JH: Basically if I had to explain it to my mom (because she has no idea what this means lol) I would say: The most viral moments on social media, are trending, meaning they only have about 24 hours until every person and brand is on it. Our goal is to be the first brand on these viral moments and then relate them back to Chili’s—this gets eyeballs on the brand that haven’t seen us in a while.
RK: And has leadership been supportive of this? How so?
JH: The most supportive. One of the first things our CMO George Felix told me was to “take big swings” and we started doing this with trending content and it has snowballed into so much more. The belief and trust from our leadership team in us is so crucial to our success, and we are so lucky to have that.
RK: Something I think about a lot is how the way people talk about your brand online can really propel and supercharge your owned brand social presence. It's like brands can feed off of the energy that customers are putting out on social. How has the general brand love for Chili's that's been popping up on TikTok helped or affected the brand's overall social strategy?
JH: It’s totally changed everything. I think because we had been jumping into these trending moments and feeding our fans with funny, engaging content for two years, we’re seeing payoff in terms of conversation. Now, the comment section totally informs what we are posting on social, because if our fans are already talking about it, that will make for the best content.
RK: Something I feel like Chili's does well when it comes to "re-igniting Chili’s back to culture through trending social media" is your outbound community management. There seems to always be a clever response from Chili's.
JH: Community engagement was my first role on the social team and is probably my favorite thing about social. People forget that social media is the ONLY channel a brand will ever have that is truly 24/7. Making connections with your fans and people that engage with your content day in and day out is so crucial to building your presence online.
We spent a lot of time when I first came on the team redefining what that brand voice and tone would be, and it’s definitely paid off. From there, I kind of just have the channels up on my laptop and phone all day and engage with people throughout the day, this keeps creativity flowing and has led to so many good ideas—because if the fans are talking about it, we want to talk about it too.
RK: Let's talk about Twitter outbound community management. How do you decide what to quote tweet? Is there a big approvals process?
JH: We have approvals up to a leadership level, but the key is gaining them really fast. This goes back to the trust from our leaders to engage with this content, and luckily, they are so quick to respond and (usually) give us the green light to engage.
When looking at what to quote tweet, we always want to be one of the first brands to engage, so if the trend is already been up for a day, we might pass (and I’ll kick myself for not finding earlier). From there, we gut check if there’s any risk to engage with the content, if there is even a hint of risk, we always pass. Once we know we’re timely and there’s no risk involved, we try to find a clever way to relate this back to the brand.
RK: How would you describe your TikTok strategy? You seem to move really quickly on trends, what processes do you have in place to make sure you're able to do that?
JH: I think the most important part of jumping on trends specifically for TikTok is reminding yourself that it doesn’t have to be perfect. We know that our audience likes scrappy, and less-polished content when it comes to TikTok, so we really just try to make the insight as clever as possible when jumping into trending content and focus less on if the actual video content looks perfect.
RK: More tactical, but who are the people in Chili's TikToks? I feel like you have a whole cast of characters. And are you shooting in actual restaurants? Is there a location you like to shoot in for any specific reason?
JH: We shoot in actual restaurants and use local actors as talent! Our creative agency is based in LA, so we shoot at one of our restaurants in Encino for most of our content. The Encino team is SO GOOD to us, and we’re so thankful they let us shoot there all the time.
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RK: What do you love about working in social media?
JH: I kind of love how it’s always-on. There’s something magical about knowing that you absolutely crushed one day or had the best tweet in your brand’s history, and then you wake up the next morning to a blank slate and your able to do it all over again. I also think it’s extremely competitive, and I’m extremely competitive. When I see another brand go out and crush it, it lights a fire under me to do that for Chili’s.
I also think going back to the purpose of what we’re doing really drives me. If we post something really good or a tweet gets 100k likes, that puts Chili’s into so many people’s minds and then hopefully drives them into restaurant, which means our Team Members in-restaurant are making more money. To think that we’ve contributed to the resurgence of the brand and that our in-restaurant team members making more money, that makes me so so happy.
RK: What should I order at Chili's the next time I go?
JH: Nashville Hot Fried Mozzarella…of course.
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Thanks so much for reading!
The nature of quick approvals and risk assessment seems to be a huge part of why this works. Love seeing social getting so much love and support and how exactly that can pay off in a HUGE way.
I thought Chili's went bankrupt like 15 years ago?