Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue blends retail, catalog and e-commerce for a tastier customer experience

You can call it barbecue, barbeque, BBQ or just plain ’cue. Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, of course, calls it business. In particular, it’s a family business that started in 1957 when the Fiorella clan opened the first of its barbecue restaurants in Kansas City, Mo., called Smoke Stack Barbecue. In 1974, the eldest Fiorella son, Jack, added another branch to the family trade by opening his own operation, which he later distinguished by renaming it Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue, introducing hickory wood to the grilling process and adding seafood to the more traditional pork, poultry and beef offerings.

Thirty-five years later, the Jack Stack Barbecue business has grown to include four Kansas City area restaurants with retail stores; a multimillion-dollar catering division and private dining service; and a thriving mail order business for barbecue meats, sauces and rubs, and logo apparel.

The secret recipe behind the brand’s success brings together a focus on the product and customer service to deliver a top-notch barbecue dining experience, whether the customer is in one of the restaurants or in the comfort of his own home. Product price points range from $54.95 for a ribs dinner package that serves two to three people to $359.95 for the Jack Stack’s Signature Feast that serves 20 to 24 people. In addition, customers can supplement their barbecue packages with add-on items, such as other meats, side dishes, desserts, sauces and rubs, and even a copy of the latest catalog.

“It’s actually a challenge to sell barbecue nationwide, because the preferred regional flavor profiles vary so widely,” explains Steve Trollinger, executive vice president of J. Schmid & Associates, a catalog and multichannel marketing services firm in Mission, Kan., that works with Jack Stack Barbecue. “It so happens that Jack Stack is, for all practical purposes, the definition of ‘Kansas City barbecue’ and benefits from the cachet associated with that positioning. The result is that Jack Stack can be very ‘niche’ with the product offering but appeal widely because it’s known as the representative brand for the genre. The company’s perfectly positioned to leverage the niche and still grow.”

Lever No. 1: Retail

Zagat-rated and featured in prominent national media— “The Today Show,” Bon Appétit, The Wall Street Journal—Jack Stack’s restaurants draw the local crowd as well as fellow barbecue lovers from around the world. The company makes the most of this foot traffic with on-site retail stores that sell its signature sauces and rubs, select frozen foods, and logo apparel. Especially for long-distance travelers, the stores are the perfect environment in which to alert customers to Jack Stack’s mail order business.

“We have a number of collateral pieces inside the store that make it clear to our guests that we have those services available to them,” says Case Dorman, Jack Stack’s president and CEO (and son-in-law of the company founder). “We’ll have marketing pieces spread throughout the store in tactful places,” he explains, emphasizing the importance of not detracting from the dining experience with a hardsell offer on these services.

In fact, the focus on the upscale barbecue restaurant brand factors largely into the company’s decision not to run a loyalty program. “We’ve always been sensitive to that balance between having a relaxing dining experience and feeling like somebody is always trying to sell you something as you’re involved in that process, so that’s probably why we’ve been slow to develop a program in-house,” says Dorman.

As such, Jack Stack is proceeding cautiously with the development of a contact management program for its retail customers. Currently, the company tracks store visits through its customer service team in its shipping division, flagging callers by catalog, online or retail source.

Another way the company leverages in-person interaction is via an insert that comes with the customers’ bills in the check presenter. Jack Stack Barbecue Vice President Travis Carpenter says this insert promotes the shipping business with information on the program as well as a 10 percent discount offer. Called Jack’s Bucks, this in-restaurant promotion helps acquaint customers with the store, Web site and catalog. Plus, Carpenter adds, it allows Jack Stack to gather customer information when the offer is redeemed.

To help drive repeat and new restaurant business, the company is continuing a partnership promotion with American Express. For the second year, Jack Stack participated in a coupon mailing that offers recipients a free entrée of equal or lesser value with the purchase of a second entrée. Mailed to about 15,000 people, Carpenter notes the “majority are current customers or lapsed customers, and there’s a little bit of prospecting in there, as well.” He tallies the promotion’s response rate at between 10 percent and 12 percent.

Dorman and Carpenter have been pleased with the success of the American Express mailing and the restaurants’ overall performance, especially during this recession.

“Our restaurants have maintained their sales levels, for the most part. But it is an environment where you really have to stay out there in front of your guests and continue to talk to them,” says Dorman.

Lever No. 2: Catalog

Mailed nine to 12 times a year with two different creative campaigns, the catalog reaches Jack Stack’s customer and prospecting audience of men and women, primarily ages 40 and older with average annual household incomes of $75,000. In addition to being displayed in the restaurant stores, the catalog is offered on the company’s Web site.

For visitors less familiar with the Jack Stack brand, the company devotes space in its catalog pages to sharing its down-home story and point of view.

“One of the things we’ve really tried to leverage, and with importance, is the experiential piece in our branding that says we’re selling our restaurant experience. So we attempt to use the restaurant experience to motivate people to purchase from the catalog. When you open the catalog, there’s a little history about the restaurants … and information on the restaurant locations that are in Kansas City,” Dorman explains. “What we want to share with them is just a little piece of our brand and our culture and who we are, so we can start building some value in that dining experience that’s beyond just, ‘Hey, buy a slab from us because we have a catalog,’ or, ‘Buy this barbecue meal from us because we have this catalog with a great picture.’ We try to establish our brand identity and a little history with them so they have a reference point for that.”

The catalog is the primary acquisition tool for Jack Stack, with e-mail and the restaurants pulling their weight for customer retention. That said, the company will be trimming some of its catalog prospecting activity this year and investigating online opportunities to keep its acquisition costs in line.

Lever Nos. 3 and 4: Web Site and E-mail

As is the trend with many direct marketers, Jack Stack is looking for ways to drive more value in its online marketing channels. Again, the company seeks to leverage its Web site as another brand-positioning tool and a complement to the information prospects and customers might discover via the retail and catalog channels.

“So they can see [the products] in the catalog, refer to the Web site, the Web site reflects what they’ve seen in the catalog, and then they can look through the Web site and see the different restaurant locations and even learn more about our history and the other things that we do,” says Dorman.

Another point of channel integration is the ability for customers to shop for products on the Web site by catalog item number to facilitate the browsing and online ordering process.

As for e-mail marketing, Jack Stack collects e-mail addresses during the checkout process and via a promotions program where prospects and customers can sign up to receive sales alerts. According to Dorman, the company runs a couple specific sales each year—an Add-On Sale, where customers can tack on products to barbecue packages, and a summer Rib Sale—and then supplements those efforts with weekly promotions for either new items or trigger messages.

To capitalize on the wider online marketing opportunities available, the company has begun exploring paid search, partnership options that might be a good fit for the brand and even social networking. “That’s something that’s generationally not in my age range,” Dorman says of social media marketing, “so I leave that to Travis and the younger people to help us with. It’s definitely on our radar screen, and we see the importance and the viral aspect of social networking as being potentially very significant for us.”

Channel Work

With a mail order business that’s not quite 10 years in the making and is funded by operating capital, the Jack Stack management team has been concerned with steady progress as opposed to chasing every marketing trend. The current focus is on optimizing performance, by working with J. Schmid & Associates, e-commerce marketing firm DminSite, and consumer data and analytics firm NextAction to develop more customer demographic information to guide prospecting and retention efforts. American Express helps on the retail side, providing demographic data on customers who use this payment method and who respond to the promotional campaign. Jack Stack reviews this data weekly for campaign adjustments as well as quarterly to make bigger program changes.

Due to the company’s USP of providing a premium barbecue dining experience, recency and frequency are not key factors in marketing on the restaurant side. “We’re not looking to cater to a customer who is driven by discounts,” Dorman explains.

For mail order customers who opt in to e-mail communication, Jack Stack contacts them up to 55 times a year. “More likely than not, a little less than that for most of our customers,” says Dorman.

Armed with deeper insight into its customers, the company is turning its attention to better channel coordination, which includes building channel preferences into its business model. J. Schmid’s Trollinger points to the coming integration of “e-mail offers with catalog mailings, particularly to the local market. The company is almost universally known in the Kansas City area, and all indicators say that engaging these customers across channels will exponentially improve retention and customer value.”

Next on the Menu

Given that Jack Stack has face-to-face interaction with plenty of its customers day in and day out, it’s not surprising that it plans to take directional cues expressly from its customers.

“We’re considering customer surveys … potentially doing some polling, say, after an e-mail campaign,” Dorman explains. The guiding principle here is to build a continual feedback loop to get customers’ opinions on everything from products and service to marketing and media. “We want to know how the shopping experience went for them, how the marketing experience went for them; if they bought a gift, how that went. How important things like packaging are and timeliness of delivery, and some of those other things that we can offer some control over and adapt to and change to, if that’s where we see our customers directing us,” says Dorman.

It’s all a part of building the business by improving the customer experience, a practice that Jack Stack Barbecue comes by naturally. You might even call it a family tradition.