Harnessing ‘the magic of the Bo-Berry’
Plus: The news of the week
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Q&A: Bojangles chief marketing officer Tom Boland shares Bojangles’ innovation strategies as the Charlotte-based restaurant chain undertakes a national expansion
What started as a small Charlotte restaurant in 1977 has since grown into a beloved brand with over 800 locations across 17 states, known for its fried chicken, biscuits and sweet tea.
That’s right, we’re talking about Bojangles.
Most folks from the South are familiar with the fast food chain, especially those who tailgate for sporting events and are charged with bringing a “Bo Box.” But Bojangles is on a mission to expand the regional brand beyond the South and introduce it to new customers.
Tom Boland, the chief marketing officer of Bojangles, is responsible for marketing the chicken chain’s classics — including the Bo-Berry biscuit — as well as its new ideas. A lot of thought and research goes into Bojangles’ marketing and menu, Boland says, including conversations with customers about their menu hacks — like putting chicken supremes into hot dog buns or halving a Bo-Berry biscuit and adding a sausage patty in the middle.
Before joining Bojangles in 2023, Boland worked with big names including Barstool Sports, WarnerMedia and the WWE.
Boland recently sat down with The Ledger’s Tony Mecia on The Charlotte Ledger Podcast to talk about how Bojangles stays relevant in a fiercely competitive industry, how it innovates the menu and how it is expanding beyond the Southeast.
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation. You can listen to the full episode here.
The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q. Let's talk a little bit about the Bojangles menu. You're obviously known for chicken and biscuits. That's kind of your core. You've got the Cajun fries. You got the sweet tea, which is branded as “legendary” …
Drinking it right now.
Q. … as opposed to all those other sweet teas that are out there that aren't legendary. And then you have the Bo-Berry biscuits. You've recently tested and expanded some of that line. You have a Bo-Berry sausage biscuit. You have Bo-Berry cookies. What exactly is a Bo-Berry?
The Bo-Berry biscuit first came out in 1987. It’s an absolutely delicious treat, where it combines the fantastic taste of Bo-Berries — which is similar to blueberry flavoring with icing on top of it. It’s been a cult favorite of this brand for years and years.
As an individual who didn’t grow up with Bojangles, but was recently introduced to it, when I moved down South and I had my first Bo-Berry, I was like, “Wow, this thing is magic. No wonder it’s been around for so many years.” Then listening to a lot of the employees in the store, talking to our customers, we really found that there was a lot of magic and a lot of love behind the Bo-Berry.
You mentioned the Bo-Berry cookies. We launched them this summer, and they were a runaway hit. We’re talking the 5x what we were anticipating on sales.
It got to a point where our Bo-Berry supplier is like, “We have to slow down because we need to make more Bo-Berries.”
Q: So there is an actual Bo-Berry supplier? Are you able to disclose where the Bo-Berries are sourced from?
That’s a great question. I do not know exactly where they came from, but it’s a magical place, clearly, that goes into a lot of our products.
And then we took it to the next step.
If you grew up in North Carolina and you’re around a Bojangles in college, you may already know about this, but there was an off-menu item. I was reviewing the data on the weekends, where I would see a spiking activity of side orders of the sausage patty with a Bo-Berry biscuit, and it would spike so high that I actually got in the car.
We went to go visit some stores, and I started to ask the managers, “What is happening here?” They all laughed at me, and they’re like, “It’s the ‘Sausage Bo-Berry.’ The college kids come in and get it on the weekend.”
They would take a Bo-Berry biscuit and put sausage in the middle and eat it. Our culinary team reworked that idea. We sold millions and millions of these. It was such a home run for us.
Q: How do you think about the mix of your menu? It seems like you have some foundational items and then you have a rotating cast of items, and then you have experimental items. How do you offer enough to appeal to a wide range of people while not making it too complex for the restaurants?
For the past 47 years, chicken biscuits and tea have helped power this business, so we always want to make sure that we have that to offer. However, it’s very competitive out there, and we want to make sure that we’re offering a competitive product to appeal to new consumers as well. We’re starting to experiment with some limited-time offers to get a sense of how we can bring in different, younger, more diverse consumers at different times of the year and at different parts of the day.
In January, we experimented with a rice bowl. A rice bowl takes advantage of a lot of the great ingredients we have in the kitchen; it just puts it in a different format. That was wildly popular, and it helped attract a younger, more diverse consumer to our restaurants.
Then, we moved to the Bird Dog. We heard a story from an employee about how he grew up playing sports, and his dad would get a large order of Supremes, bring hot dog buns, and then the kids would put different toppings on it and they called them “bird dogs.” So, similar to the Sausage Bo-Berry: If you stop and listen and look around, there’s all these great hacks that have been happening.
Q: It seems like to me like you’ve positioned yourself as the restaurant of choice for tailgaters. How much is sports a factor in your marketing?
The power of sports has been huge for this brand. Since it started, we’ve been closely associated not only with college football, but also with the Carolina Panthers. We’re one of their original partners.
I’m proud to say that we also have a deal with Bryce Young, QB1 for the Panthers. Sports have worked really well for us, whether it’s football, NASCAR, fishing — we’ve tried a bunch of different things, but most recently we’re leaning in and we’re testing some new properties with WWE [pro wrestling].
Looking at the data and their consumer, that’s a global brand that’s wildly popular, and their fans are so passionate and so supportive. And when you index their fans against ours, they over-index on chicken consumption. It was just such a natural partnership.
What all of these categories have in common is sports fans are fanatics, and if you can partner with sports brands in an organic way, you can pass along the excitement for your brand.
Q: Bojangles is expanding into other markets, including New Jersey, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. How does the Bojangles experience translate into these new markets where they’re maybe not accustomed to having a biscuit for breakfast or having sweet tea?
We’re figuring that out. How people eat and what they look for at breakfast, lunch and dinner, we need to help educate. A lot of people didn’t grow up with Bojangles.
I saw it in my own life when my family moved down here. My daughter and her swim team from Connecticut came down, and they went to a Bojangles. And they didn’t know what dirty rice was. They didn’t know what a Bo-Berry biscuit was. They all ordered chicken tenders and soda and French fries. And then, when we brought them the other menu items — “Hey, try a Bo-Berry. Try dirty rice. Try the mac and cheese” — moving them around the menu immediately gets them to fall in love with the brand.
We’re trying to translate that, and that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to work with Bryce Young.
Bryce Young was coming to Charlotte, and the way that we’ve been working with him is giving everyone kind of a peek behind the curtain as he experiences the menu and he uncovers the magic of the Bo-Berry and he has sweet tea for the first time.
It’s really fun to see other people learning and adapting and understanding the magic of Bo-Time. We’re working through that, and we’re using data to help guide decisions in our expansion markets.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation to learn more about …
Bojangles’ partnership with WWE
how the culinary team translates customers’ experiences into new products
how Bojangles’ new AI drive-thru ordering system, “Bo-linda,” is doing
Bojangles’ strategy with retailers
🎧 Full episode:
The Charlotte Ledger Podcast features conversations on local topics including business, nonprofits, education and more. It’s available on major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Check it out!
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This week in Charlotte: County manager to retire, transit plan agreement reached, Debby dumps 4” of rain, Brooklyn Village delayed again, Panthers’ plane runs off runway
On Saturdays, The Ledger sifts through the local news of the week and links to the top articles — even if they appeared somewhere else. We’ll help you get caught up. That’s what Saturdays are for.
Politics
Transit plan agreement: (WSOC) The city, the county and five of Mecklenburg’s six towns agreed on legislation that would advance a stalled transit plan by backing a sales tax referendum. Matthews opposes the deal. The legislation would still need to pass the General Assembly.
County Manager Dena Diorio to retire: (Ledger) Dena Diorio, the long-serving Mecklenburg County manager known for her direct leadership style, announced her retirement after more than 11 years at the helm. Diorio, who became the county’s first female manager in 2013, will step down in July 2025.
Local News
A lot of rain: The remnants of Hurricane Debby dumped about 4” of rain on Charlotte on Thursday, flooding some roads.
Body cam video released in fatal police shooting: (WFAE) Pineville police released officers’ body cam footage that shows the lead-up to a fatal police shooting in May, when an off-duty officer confronted a suspected shoplifter.
Education
Chancellor selected for Chapel Hill: (WRAL) UNC Chapel Hill named its interim leader, Lee Roberts, as chancellor. Roberts was the state budget director under Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and founded a Raleigh investment firm.
Private school enrollment rises: (EdNC) The number of private schools in North Carolina remained stable during the 2023-24 school year with 881 total schools — 96 of which are in Mecklenburg County. Private school enrollment rose 3.5%, with 131,230 students.
Business
Brooklyn Village delayed again: (WFAE) The developer of the planned Brooklyn Village project uptown says it can’t start building apartments until 2026, 10 years after the contract was awarded by Mecklenburg County. Donahue Peebles III told commissioners that high interest rates and lack of financing are causing the delay.
Red Ventures offloads tech site at a loss: (Ledger) Red Ventures is selling tech review site CNET for $100M+, four years after buying it for $500M.
Observer parent merges with celebrity mag publisher: (Miami Herald) McClatchy, the parent company of The Charlotte Observer, said it is merging with Accelerate360, a magazine giant that publishes Us Weekly and In Touch Weekly.
Sports
Truist replaces Wells Fargo in Charlotte’s PGA Tour event: (Axios Charlotte) Charlotte’s PGA Tour event has been renamed the Truist Championship, following the departure of Wells Fargo as the event’s title sponsor.
Peppers inducted into Hall of Fame: (NBC Sports) Retired Carolina Panther Julius Peppers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday. In his induction speech, he said: “Everyone can be a Hall of Famer in life. … Whatever it is you do, do it with respect, passion, resilience, dedication and gratitude.”
Metaphor alert?: (WCNC) A Delta Air Lines plane carrying Carolina Panthers players and coaches ran off the runway at Charlotte’s airport this morning around 2:35 a.m. and was met with emergency vehicles, following the Panthers’ 17-3 preseason loss Thursday night at New England. There were no reported injuries.
From the Ledger family of newsletters…
City bulldozes historic house near airport: The city of Charlotte demolished a century-old historic house near the airport, despite preservation efforts by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission.
Plus: Understanding Charlotte’s rise in economic mobility data; Arts critic takes the stage; Elizabeth streetcar stop annihilated
Wednesday (🔒)
Here come the nurses: A growing number of Charlotte-area colleges and universities are expanding or creating nursing programs to address the region's critical nursing shortage.
Plus: Economist predicts how Charlotte would fare in a recession; Airport says it was transparent on plans to demolish old house
Friday (🔒)
Hospitals get in on medical debt-relief plan: Several major hospital systems in North Carolina, including Novant Health, are opting into a state government plan to erase medical debt for low-income patients.
Plus: Answering reader question on mysterious Rail Trail tubes, Brooklyn Village developer in his own words, city accuses landmarks commission of not following “standard procedure”
Fútbol Friday (special Wednesday edition!)
U.S. Men’s soccer star joins Charlotte FC: Veteran U.S. center back Tim Ream, who played in the 2022 World Cup, has joined Charlotte FC from Fulham FC, seeking a fresh start in MLS and aiming to contribute his experience while preparing for a potential home World Cup in 2026.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman