Testing New Concepts for Hooters

Urgent pain point: Carl Sweat, Hooter's new CMO, needed fresh, in‑the‑moment customer feedback from multiple markets over a single weekend so he could present board‑ready insights without relying on stale online surveys.

Hooters was preparing to validate a new fast casual restaurant concept, Hoot’s Righteous Wings (HRW). As an industry veteran, Carl knew conventional online surveys wouldn’t capture the real‑time reactions he needed — impressions, specific likes and dislikes, visit frequency, and direct comparisons with competitors on key dimensions.

The stakes were high: HRW required rapid, reliable in‑market intelligence to decide next steps for HRW and to support an imminent board presentation. The exact trigger for the research was the soft launch of HRW and the need to evaluate customer response across multiple nationwide markets in a very compressed timeframe.

How could Carl rapidly collect authentic, in‑the‑moment customer feedback across several markets using in‑market MRS so the team could make evidence‑based decisions and deliver confidence to the board?

Key differentiator: our proprietary customer journey and intercept research solution that yields “real-time” qualitative and quantitative insights from actual in-store customers.

Process (what we did, step-by-step)

1. First: Carl reached out to Gold Research with a need for fast, customer-level insights.
2. Then: we provided rapid support from senior researchers to co‑develop and refine the questionnaire so it captured the key questions Carl needed.
3. Next: we deployed our proprietary intercept research approach to capture real‑time qualitative and quantitative feedback from actual customers.
4. Finally: insights were produced from the collected data to answer the core research questions.

Proprietary methods & technologies

1. Proprietary intercept research solution (real‑time insight capture)
2. Senior researcher‑led questionnaire design and rapid implementation

Keywords: real-time, qualitative, quantitative, intercept research, customer insights, questionnaire design, senior researchers, rapid deployment.

Real-time access to incoming data — no waiting for results!

1. Real-time data: immediate visibility into in-store responses for faster decisions
2. Richer, on-the-spot shopper journey insights: targeted mobile questionnaire capturing preferences while experiences were fresh
3. Multi-market evaluation: concurrent store comparisons across regions
4. Continuous quality monitoring: live oversight to ensure data integrity

Client Testimonial:

“I have been working with Gold Research for several years now with outstanding results. Their work quality and execution has been quite consistent. Gold Research stands in a select group of trusted partners that I can rely on to deliver, even when the pressure is on.” – Carl Sweat, Global CMO, Hooters (HOA Brands).

FAQ

1. How quickly were results delivered? Results were delivered in real time — incoming data was available immediately.
2. Was the method scalable or replicable? Yes — stores in multiple markets were evaluated concurrently, demonstrating scalability and replicability.