Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Alpha8472
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Re: Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Post by Alpha8472 »

I noticed the Jack In The Box app has some more deals now again. They are mediocre deals such as a sandwich for $5 or a shake for $3.

Jack In The Box lured customers in about 4 or 5 years ago with free items via the app. Now the free items are gone. When you have fewer deals, you don't get as many visits by customers.

The appeal of Jack In The Box over McDonald's probably was the $6 Munchie Meals after 9 PM or the 2 tacos for 99 cents. They still have the Taco deal on the app, but the munchies meals are expensive now. The fried onion rings, jalapeño poppers, and curly fries were a draw since you couldn't get them at McDonald's.

Jack In the Box is doing popcorn chicken now. There is regular and spicy, but it is expensive.

You get more variety with Jack In The Box, but probably not enough to get more customers than McDonald's.
storewanderer
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Re: Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Post by storewanderer »

Jack in the Box has a few items that are different mostly frozen/fried foods anyone could sell if they wanted to. I liked the Chicken Fajita Pita but have not had one in quite some time.

They seem to have changed online ordering providers and the promotions being done seem to be being managed from a profit margin perspective as opposed to trying to get people to use the app. I suspect they are allocating less marketing dollars to app discounts lately and this is the result.

The Popcorn Chicken is being sold in a combo meal for 5.99 with a small fry/small frink. The cost of a small fry/drink alone exceeds $6 here. How large is the popcorn chicken serving?

All of the apps are getting less generous. Around this time last year for March Madness Wendys app had a $1 Single deal good every day for a few weeks. This year the $1 Single deal is back but redeemable one time total per account through early April.
Alpha8472
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Re: Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Post by Alpha8472 »

The popcorn chicken box is the size of your hand. It was not tiny, but not that big either.
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Re: Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Post by Bagels »

storewanderer wrote: March 17th, 2023, 3:37 pm Those BK and Wendys franchise agreements probably have a clause written in that disallows a franchisee from flipping brands like that for a 2 or 3 year period to a directly competing concept. You could flip to a non-competing concept (like close your BK and convert it to KFC) from what I can tell. I've been reading some FDDs lately and they are interesting documents.
I'm sure they exist, but I've never seen these clauses on a full-term franchisee agreement (generally 20 years). Re-bannering is super expensive, and franchisees only seek to do so when the business profitability is subpar OR the real estate is worth more than the business. The latter, of course, has become common. BK has been pretty aggressive in acquiring the restaurants sit on (something McD's learned many decades ago), although unlike McD's, they typically flip it to a third party (with first rights to refusal).

Most legacy fast food restaurants, including individual McD's, don't generate the earnings that they did years ago (although inflation/ the COVID era has done well for McD's, so this is changing), and a few years ago it was estimated that the majority of BKs didn't generate meaningful earnings, so there's always an opportunity to poach. But the decline is largely due to changing demographics and the willingness (especially among youngsters) to spend more for a better meal. Remember -- it was the Dollar/ value menu (introduced by Wendy's and copied by McD's, who became largely know for the Dollar Menu) that saved the industry 20+ years ago by brining in large amounts of traffic (who'd often supplement their purchases with high margin items like McFlurries). Yet the big boys have once again convinced themselves that they can charge the same amount as a premium chain.
Alpha8472 wrote: March 19th, 2023, 1:28 pm I noticed the Jack In The Box app has some more deals now again. They are mediocre deals such as a sandwich for $5 or a shake for $3.

Jack In The Box lured customers in about 4 or 5 years ago with free items via the app. Now the free items are gone. When you have fewer deals, you don't get as many visits by customers.

The appeal of Jack In The Box over McDonald's probably was the $6 Munchie Meals after 9 PM or the 2 tacos for 99 cents. They still have the Taco deal on the app, but the munchies meals are expensive now. The fried onion rings, jalapeño poppers, and curly fries were a draw since you couldn't get them at McDonald's.

Jack In the Box is doing popcorn chicken now. There is regular and spicy, but it is expensive.

You get more variety with Jack In The Box, but probably not enough to get more customers than McDonald's.
JITB's business was largely based on cheap food. The cheap food is minimal these days. Given inflation, the Munchie Meals are arguably a better deal than they were a decade ago. And there's the two tacos if ordering through the app. But most coupons require a minimum purchase. digital deals are rare and useless, the value menu has been scrapped (at most restaurants, it was cheaper ordering on site than via the app) and the "featured item" combs have largely disappeared. Meanwhile, McD's, Wendys, BK, etc. continue to run tons of deals and coupons via their app.

I'd like to see how individual JITB are doing. A year ago, the location closest to me regularly had 15 minute waits at night but when I go by it these days, I rarely see any cars. Looking at the app, the last visit I made was in August. Since then, the other two locations near me went out.
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Re: Jack In The Box To Expand To Florida & Arkansas

Post by storewanderer »

Bagels wrote: March 19th, 2023, 4:19 pm

I'm sure they exist, but I've never seen these clauses on a full-term franchisee agreement (generally 20 years). Re-bannering is super expensive, and franchisees only seek to do so when the business profitability is subpar OR the real estate is worth more than the business. The latter, of course, has become common. BK has been pretty aggressive in acquiring the restaurants sit on (something McD's learned many decades ago), although unlike McD's, they typically flip it to a third party (with first rights to refusal).

Yet the big boys have once again convinced themselves that they can charge the same amount as a premium chain.
It depends on the agreement but there are often non competes. I can tell you Wendys FDD and Burger King's FDD both have this that if you are one of their franchisees you cannot operate another burger concept anywhere. Pretty sure McDonalds doesn't let you have any other fast food concept of any type period. This is also why you notice these large franchisees with hundreds of restaurants under multiple concepts typically only have, for instance, one burger brand in their portfolio. It is because operating multiple burger brands would violate the non compete clause of the franchise agreement.

There are stories of flipping brands I can recall. In the 90's there was a Hardees franchisee in Utah. Well not long after that things went sour with Hardees and the franchisee flipped all of the units to Burger King in the 90's. But they had to 100% close all of the Hardees first.

Pricing is pretty out of whack but if you go to a corporate operated location of any of these chains pricing tends to be noticeably more reasonable. There are also scattered franchisees who continue to price fairly. More and more what I notice is whenever a franchise changes ownership prices seem to jump 10-15% overnight under a new owner for some reason. The problem is when the selling franchisee was already priced too high now the new franchisee shows up and does a drastic increase to the already too high prices. These franchisors really need to get some control over pricing at these franchisees somehow. Two freestanding suburb type Wendys units 20 miles apart in Sacramento area should not have a $2 price difference on a Single (burger only). And - the bay area based franchisee is the one with the lower price while the one with the outrageous prices is Fresno based. What sense does that make?
Bagels wrote: March 19th, 2023, 4:19 pm
JITB's business was largely based on cheap food. The cheap food is minimal these days. Given inflation, the Munchie Meals are arguably a better deal than they were a decade ago. And there's the two tacos if ordering through the app. But most coupons require a minimum purchase. digital deals are rare and useless, the value menu has been scrapped (at most restaurants, it was cheaper ordering on site than via the app) and the "featured item" combs have largely disappeared. Meanwhile, McD's, Wendys, BK, etc. continue to run tons of deals and coupons via their app.

I'd like to see how individual JITB are doing. A year ago, the location closest to me regularly had 15 minute waits at night but when I go by it these days, I rarely see any cars. Looking at the app, the last visit I made was in August. Since then, the other two locations near me went out.
Was JITB based on cheap food before the 90's E-Coli situation? I always thought they were positioned a little above MCD/BK from a quality perspective. Their units also seemed to be a little nicer plus they had the larger menu. They always seemed lower volume. They had chicken tenders at a time other chains just had nuggets back in the early 90's. I remember after the 90's E-Coli situation they started to heavily market cheap food, late night food, and anything they possibly could that was not a burger to get customers back.

One Jack in the Box in Reno was running 9-3 PM drive through only from late 2020 until about 4 months ago. Then they slowly started expanding hours. Around November they started to open inside again. I think they are open until 10 PM now both inside and drive through. I usually see 1-2 cars in the drive through in the evenings no matter what time. However since they reopened inside no matter what time it is- lunch, mid day, or evening, I have yet to see more than 2 customers/customer groups inside. This franchisee in Reno still has a location in South Lake Tahoe that is only open 8 AM to 4 PM but that seems to be the last one running this way. No units have closed. The only fringe fast food closures in the area are these secondary chains. Fire Wings seems to have gone out of business after not being open long but Wing Stops around town are doing great. Long John Silvers (owner retired), Boston Market (seems to have been evicted) and 2 Steak N Shake (local franchisee filed bankruptcy last week). I have no clue how some of the local Burger King and every one of the local Carls units survive but somehow they do.
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