Chilli’s Grill & Bar or more commonly known as “Chillis” is a world-famous Western restaurant that offers a variety of Western food such as steaks, fajita’s, salads, and so on with an American size serving. It was founded by Larry Lavine in 1975 and has over a few thousand restaurants worldwide with over 164 locations. It has around 164 locations worldwide and more than a hundred restaurants in America itself.
The restaurant caters to mainly American local dishes as it originated from Texas and has a mix of Mexican dishes too. It became famous with the infusion of both American and Mexican dishes. Chili’s serves American food influenced by Texas and Mexican cuisine. For example, its appetizers include a fried whole onion that has been partially sliced called the “Awesome Blossom” which has been a Mexican delicacy and brought into American cuisine. Apart from that, the restaurant is also quite famous for its boneless and bone-in Buffalo wings which have been modified to cater to its Asian customers. For its Asian customers, the cuisine had been modified to the influenced chicken wings called “Shanghai Wings”. It also serves mozzarella cheese sticks which the restaurant has renamed “fried cheese” served with nachos with a variety of toppings from mustard sauce to mayonnaise. Apart from that, their other famous and popular dishes include the Southwestern eggrolls, the Triple Dipper, spinach and artichoke dip, tostada chips and salsa, and a spiced cheese dip the company calls “Skillet Queso”.
The entrées include hamburgers which the company calls “Big Mouth Burgers”, fajitas, quesadillas, and baby back ribs. Moreover, Chili’s also serves a variety of alcoholic drinks and desserts, including such items as a molten chocolate cake.
The restaurant mainly caters to a more casual dining and family-oriented style restaurant. The portions also are according to the American style of eating and include a variety of dishes to offer choices to the various family members in a family which are from the parents to the youngest members in the family. If you walk into a Chilli’s restaurant, you will also see that there are television sets that play the American favorite game, the football game. It came around when most fathers would not want to miss their favorite games to bring their families outside to enjoy a meal, thus Chilli’s management smartly invested in these television sets to show the games in their restaurants as a way to encourage families to spend time together and at the same time to not miss out on their favorite game.
The Chilli’s management does not spend much of their budget on advertising as they believe in the power of word of mouth or the 7/70 rule whereby when one customer likes it they would spread the word around. Thus, they advertise mainly as a reminder to their customers. One of their advertisements is a jingle used in Chili’s Restaurant commercials to advertise the restaurant’s line of baby back ribs which gained popularity throughout the country.
The advertisement was popular and was named the song first on its list of “10 songs most likely to get stuck in your head” in 2004 by the Advertising Age magazine.
The Chillis restaurant management is well known for its charity deeds. Every year in September, the restaurant management has the “Create a Pepper” campaign whereby guests who patrons the restaurant can purchase chili peppers which they can then color and will later be hung in the restaurant. These proceeds are donated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Also, in the year of 2007, Chili’s opened the Chili’s Care Center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital which specifically provides specialized treatment on brain cancer. Apart from that, Chili’s also contributes to the Scottish Rite Hospital for Children and the Limbs For Life Foundation.
The management could use more advertising to popularize their restaurant for other parts of the world. They could probably redo their official website to include more information on the history of their company, about the management, their activities, their shareholders, and so on and so forth. They could also include more pictures of their restaurants worldwide. Perhaps they could also begin delivery service worldwide since they already have their targeted loyal customers and it would kick off well for them as people would rather buy healthier meals from Chillies than the fast-food restaurants.