Starbird CEO talks trends in chicken sandwiches, salads, wings. Has spicy run its course?

Seven years after its Bay Area founding, the premium chicken Starbird chain is taking its vision to Southern California.

The inspiration behind Starbird stemmed from the realization by Aaron Noveshen and the innovators at his Culinary Edge consultancy that there were too many burger players in the marketplace. So they decided to focus on chicken — and not just any chicken, but a fresh bird, marinated in a signature brine then fried in rice bran oil to give it a lighter taste and better crunch.

With their first Starbird in Sunnyvale, they offered a tech-driven experience too, making it app-convenient. Gone was the drive-thru, replaced by a fast delivery to the customer’s car — four years before the Covid pandemic made friction-free food the industry standard.

They were prescient about the chicken too. “Even burger brands are now required to have chicken on their menu to fulfill the consumer demand,” says Noveshen, who is both the CEO of Starbird and the chairman of Culinary Edge.

Today, Starbird operates seven restaurants from Walnut Creek to Campbell, along with stands at San Francisco International Airport, Levi’s Stadium and Cal Memorial Stadium and an S.F. cloud kitchen.

The SoCal expansion started last October with a Starbird in Hermosa Beach. Next up, in late July, will be a Fairfax location, followed by one in Marina del Rey. The Bay Area will get three more too, in Palo Alto, Pleasanton and South San Francisco.

We talked with Noveshen about flavors and trends, whether the spicy chicken mania will continue and, of course, what he likes to eat at his own restaurants. Here’s an edited version:

Q: When you folks at Culinary Edge/Starbird decided that chicken would be the next big thing, did you have any idea just how popular chicken sandwiches would become?

A: We anticipated its potential, but the extent to which chicken sandwiches would become wildly popular exceeded our expectations. The rise in popularity of chicken sandwiches, driven by factors such as flavor innovation and consumer preferences, has been remarkable. As a result, we’ve expanded our offerings to feature chicken salads, tacos, wings and more. And we believe the marketplace will continue to grow.

Q: You offer a Nashville Hot. What do you see as the future of spicy chicken?

A: Starbird’s Nashville Hot, added in fall of 2018, has consistently been our best-selling sandwich for the past few years. Several other chicken brands are focused solely on Nashville Hot, and we predict this is a trend that will pass over time. We’re actively exploring new trends that will allow us to be a player for generations to come.

Q: How has the California palate affected your menu?

A: Considering California continues to rank as the fittest state with the healthiest residents, we saw the need to address this demographic and have expanded our offerings to create craveable salads — so much so, that our salad category has become the leading category for a QSR (quick-service restaurant) chicken brand over the past four years.

Q: What prompted the SoCal expansion?

A: We have been thrilled with the success of Starbird in Northern California. Los Angeles felt like the best next step, as there is already brand familiarity. We also wanted our second market expansion to be somewhere we could support easily operationally.

Q: What are the key differentiators that keep customers coming back for your chicken?

A: Our commitment to high-quality food: fresh chicken raised without antibiotics, housemade sauces and dressings freshly prepared daily, (and) our produce — most comes from California — is pickled and roasted in-house. The bread for our sandwiches is baked at La Brea Bakery, and our cane-sugar sodas are made by Alameda Point Craft Soda.

Q: Is there a role for AI at Starbird?

A: We currently utilize AI for targeted marketing purposes — engaging with our guests, suggesting relevant food items. And while voice recognition remains a significant challenge in AI, we are actively planning to use that technology to offer the convenience of ordering food while on the go.

Q: What new menu items or flavors are in the works?

A: We’re unleashing a whole new category of super premium sandwiches. The past six months, we have been in our innovation kitchen trialing sandwiches every week until we nailed the perfect lineup. Our new sandwiches have a larger chicken filet, a new soft brioche bun that we toast, and refined housemade sauces and slaw to complement each sandwich.

We are also testing “jumbo”-sized, all-white-meat Starbird Nuggets and plan to launch systemwide by this fall. We will pair these nuggets with our nine housemade sauces and two new sauces that will bring some heat to our menu.