On a mission to bridge the gap between Jamaicans’ love for fried chicken and the need to improve the quick-service restaurant experience, businessmen Conley Salmon, Oral McCook and Donald Patterson were relentless in their pursuit to create a home-grown fried chicken chain, called Quick Chick, which they officially opened on July 26, 2019.

This walk-in restaurant outlet at the Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre would be the first step for the trio realising their goal of opening at least four more Quick Chick locations within a five-year span. However, those plans were frustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic over the last three years, although the downtime served as an opportunity for the proprietors to fine-tune their business model and prepare for the opening of their second outlet on Grant’s Pen Avenue in the Corporate Area while considering the location of the third store.

With the tagline “Great Taste, Without the Wait!” the company underscores its aim of providing a quality meal with speedy service.

“Our average service time is running around two and a half minutes,” Chairman and Managing Director Salmon told the Jamaica Observer a few days after the official launch of the second location, adding: “Some people have to wait a little longer, some people have less.”

While Quick Chick’s Half-Way-Tree outlet offers both walk-in and delivery services through its partners 7Krave and QuickCart, its newer location gives its customers an additional option: a drive-thru. There on Grant’s Pen Avenue the mobile customer drives up to a cashier and places his or her order and then is directed to the storefront to join one of three queues while waiting for pick-up.

According to Salmon, while waiting on a crowded weekend afternoon may take between five and seven minutes, the wait time beats that of any other fast-food restaurant in Jamaica.

“And we will be perfecting the systems to further reduce that wait time…[Currently] we have a basic system in place that is process-oriented. In other words, we know what each process time should be and therefore we’re looking at how to improve that,” he explained.

“So we’re very much in the process of fine-tuning…We’re learning as we go along,” he added.

In the first three weeks of operation the second Quick Chick outlet exceeded the owners’ “conservative” projections with new customers accounting for the majority of sales. After almost a month open, revenues for the Grant’s Pen location were either matching or surpassing those of Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre.

On this note, Salmon highlighted a striking contrast.

“It’s really a different market segment. There you’re dealing [mainly] with commuters in buses; here, you’re dealing with a different catchment area. So your catchment in Half-Way-Tree is workplaces in that area and commuters, and that’s a lot of lunchtime meals and take-home meals and it’s a different income level. Here, you have people who own a car and their spend is a little higher [because] you’ll find that the spend for a drive-thru [customer] is two or three times that of a walk-in [customer],” he informed the Business Observer.

The Quick Chick chairman estimates that between 15,000 to 20,000 cars traverse the Grant’s Pen corridor, which acts as “a main artery between Jack’s Hill, Barbican, Norbrook and that side” of St Andrew, making the location ideal for the entity.

With the help of Issa Construction to identify the location, demolish an old structure and erect a new one, the proprietors were able to have the establishment ready for opening in a matter of three months of entering a lease. But Salmon is also grateful for the support of the company’s financial partners — the National Export-Import Bank and the National Commercial Bank — for providing funding for the expansion.

On the matter of growing the number of outlets, Salmon emphasised that Quick Chick is not a franchise, though he noted that neither he nor his partners are opposed to exploring that business model, pointing out that offers have been made to set up stores outside of the Corporate Area, and even beyond Jamaica’s shores. Notwithstanding, he explained that there has to be due diligence when embarking on any expansion, and in the circumstance of a franchise, the directors would have to weigh the benefits of collecting franchise fees against managing the quality standards of the brand to ensure consistent delivery at all stores.

“I believe in the emergent strategy. It’s what are the opportunities that arise, and you have to be prepared to take advantage of them,” Salmon stated.

One of those opportunities, he indicated, is that Jamaicans eat about three million kilos per week, creating a ready market. There is also an opportunity in the marketplace for improved service along with competitive pricing. Thirdly, there are ready and reliable suppliers of all the inputs needed in the business; two of which include Jamaica Broilers Group, for which Salmon served as a manager for over 35 years, and Wisynco.

These are the factors Salmon credited for the company surviving the COVID-19 pandemic and emerging a leaner and more robust operation. Though he contended that even with these opportunities, it was important to prioritise relationship management.

“When you bring people in and train them that you have a 30-second window to impress this customer with courtesy and efficiency, helping them to make a choice… it’s a fascinating dynamic,” he said.

Turning his attention to the company’s next outlet, Salmon told the Business Observer that it will most likely be in the Greater Kingston Area, given that approximately 70 per cent of the country’s population resides and works within the locale.

“We’re a small organisation. We don’t want to spread our store to Negril Point when you can have one next door,” he said, arguing that the adage “most reward for least effort” is one to be heeded in business.

While Quick Chick now outsources some of its support functions such as accounting, recruitment and social media marketing, Salmon recognises that as the business grows, it will need to build out its management team, emphasising that training people up is a huge opportunity for staff retention in a tight labour market.