George Felix, CMO at Brinker International’s Chili’s restaurant chain, has spent the last 2.5 years focused on bringing value to customers and making the legacy brand relevant in today’s culture.
This year is no different – the brand recently celebrated its 50th birthday. “It is just hitting its peak,” says Felix. “We’re always looking for ways to keep surprising people about where Chili’s is going to show up next.”
The brand has shown up in culture in several ways. Boyz II Men sang their famous Baby Back Ribs jingle. They created a country music video as part of its NASCAR partnerships. They’ve talked about burgers in video games and they made a mini movie with Lifetime to celebrate National Margarita Day.
Value is core to how Chili’s thinks about its busines model. On the brand’s anniversary, they offered their signature Presidente Margarita for $5 in stores. The chain always offers a $6 Margarita of the Month, a $10.99 meal deal and free chips and salsa to loyalty members.
As CMO of the brand, Felix oversees brand positioning, TV, digital, social media, media buying strategy and even culinary and beverage innovation reports.
“I look at my job is how do we make Chili’s really relevant to consumers and keep the brand top of mind so that when people are thinking about a place where they can take their family to eat and get great value on great food and margaritas, they’re thinking about Chili’s,” he explains.
Felix will be speaking at the Brand Innovators Marketing Innovation Summit in Dallas on July 10th hosted at the Chili’s headquarters.
Prior to joining Chili’s, Felix held leadership roles at brands including Pizza Hut, KFC and Old Spice. Brand Innovators caught up with Felix from his office in Dallas to talk about guest experience, value propositions and being a brand in culture. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Tell me about the guest experience. How are you trying to get people in and then what are you doing to create experiences that make them want to stay in return?
Most people know the brand Chili’s. The big task for us is how do we keep Chili’s top of mind when people are making decisions on where they want to eat. So we are really focused on making sure people know that Chili’s is a place where you can get great value every day of the year. There’s no gimmicks, there’s no strings attached.
For example, we have this 3 for Me Deal, which you can basically get a burger and fries, bottomless chips and salsa and a bottomless drink for $10.99. We think that’s the best value in the industry. We’re also the leading seller of margaritas in the United States. Our Margarita of the Month is always $6. A lot of restaurant brands make it difficult for guests to do limited time offers or you have to order it on the app or jump through hoops. At Chili’s, we believe that you should be able to get a great meal at a great price every single day. Communicating that message is really important.
How is Chili’s showing up in the culture?
Being a brand that’s really relevant in culture is really important to us. We want to be in the cultural zeitgeist and show up in fun ways and unexpected ways. We’ve had Boyz II Men come back and sing our famous Baby Back Ribs jingle. We’ve done NASCAR partnerships where we created a country music video. We’ve done video games, talking about our burgers, all the way through making a mini movie with Lifetime to celebrate National Margarita Day. We want to continue to find unexpected ways to show up and be a brand in culture.
Can you talk about your approach to product innovation?
We’ve got a great team that’s really focused on really looking at all aspects of our menu, whether that’s our core categories like burgers and chicken crispers and fajitas and margaritas or appetizers or desserts. They’re constantly looking at trends that could fit our brand, looking at ways we can make our food better and also improve the consistency in which our team members can make that food and deliver it to our guests. Our innovation team partners very closely with our culinary team to spot trends. Sometimes that’s a small tweak to an existing menu item, and sometimes it’s an entirely new item.
How do you think about loyalty?
Loyalty has evolved over the last few years. We used to look at loyalty as offering a lot of discounts out to loyalty members. We have really moved away from that. We’re not really discount focused. We’re now more hospitality focused. The best way to get people to come back is to deliver a great experience. Our My Chili’s Rewards program offers free chips and salsa on every visit. Our fans love those, so it is a great benefit. We really want to make sure we’re engaging with our loyalty members in a way that highlights the things they love about the brand and something new that we think they should try.
Can you share how you are embracing social food trends?
We have a great social media team that really keeps their finger on the pulse of what’s going on across channels. You’ve got to be very relevant. They do a great job of bringing the Chili’s tone of voice to life in a way that is very specific to the platform they’re on. Whether you’re on Instagram or X or TikTok, you need to be very cognizant of how people interact and want to interact on those platforms. We’ve seen a huge interest in our food on TikTok over the last year, particularly our triple dipper. There’s over 200 million videos eating our fried mozzarella and doing these things called cheese pulls, which is trying to see how far they can stretch the fried mozzarella. That item isn’t a new item, but it really resonates with a younger Gen Z audience.
Can you talk about how these experiences have helped shape how you’re approaching this role?
I’ve had the pleasure of working on a few really great brands and a common thread through a lot of the brands I’ve worked on are that they are heritage brands that have great, great histories. I’ve worked on Old Spice, KFC, Pizza Hut. These are brands that are iconic American brands that at different points in their histories had really high points and then maybe lost some relevance at a certain point. I’ve learned approaches to those brands and applied it to this role at Chili’s. The idea of really understanding the DNA of a brand and really establishing the brand positioning.
With a brand like Chili’s or Old Spice or KFC or Pizza Hut, you have this wealth of history to draw on. We call this exercise digging through the attic to really understand what this brand is about. What are the things that when this brand is at its best? What did it stand for? What are all those artifacts or stories or distinctive assets that make this brand iconic? Once you understand that, then my job as a marketer is to take those things and make them relevant in 2025.
How are you thinking about AI?
AI can streamline processes and make things easier. We’re always looking for ways to make our team members’ lives easier so they can focus on just delivering great hospitality to our guests. When we think about AI, it’s really thinking about are there things that AI can do that can help take friction out of processes so we can free up time to focus on our guests. From a marketing standpoint, we are not really looking at inserting AI into the creative process in a big way or anything like that.
