Jack Cowin sees digital future for home-delivery fast food

Fast food entrepreneur Jack Cowin believes the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift by customers to ordering their burgers and fries online.

Billionaire fast food entrepreneur Jack Cowin. Picture: Richard Gosling

Billionaire fast food entrepreneur Jack Cowin believes the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift by customers to ordering their burgers and fries online and being more comfortable with home delivery, with digital platforms to be a constant and future source of growth for fast food outlets even as the health crisis passes.

Mr Cowin, whose private business Competitive Foods Australia has around 400 Hungry Jack’s franchises around the country, has directly benefited from this pivot to online and home deliveries, with its sales booming in 2020 even as for a large portion of the year its restaurants and in-store dining facilities were closed due to the pandemic.

With an estimated wealth pegged at $3.34bn when The List – Australia’s Richest 250 was published by The Australian, the businessman also told The Australian the nation needed to improve its relationship with its biggest customer, China, and de-escalate trade tensions that could threaten export industries.

Mr Cowin recently celebrated 50 years as a fast food mogul. He moved to Perth from Canada in 1969 to establish a KFC franchise after borrowing $10,000 from 30 fellow Canadians to start the venture. The latest accounts lodged with the corporate regulator reveal his fast food business Competitive Foods posted a large leap in its revenue for the 2020 financial year, with sales hitting $1.82bn, up 16 per cent from $1.57bn revenues booked in 2019.

The nation’s fast food industry has enjoyed buoyant times through the health crisis, as restaurants and cafes were closed and the chains such as Hungry Jack’s, KFC and McDonald’s made good use of their online platforms and drive-through windows.

Mr Cowin told The Australian the boom in online and deliveries more than made up for the loss of traffic and business through its Hungry Jack’s fast food outlets.

“The home delivery business and drive through was very strong and industry-wide the likes of Domino’s, McDonald’s, everyone that had low-contact aspects benefited from it,’’ Mr Cowin said.

“The restaurant industry had to close unfortunately, they did it tough, but those businesses that were able to continue to take the product to the customer, or who could stick their arm out the window in drive through, that industry benefited from that.”

That was certainly the case at Hungry Jack’s, and the company showed pre-tax earnings of around $100m for 2020, up from $76m.

Mr Cowin said the pandemic and lockdowns helped raise the awareness of other ways of getting your meals from a Hungry Jack’s store.

“What has happened is there has been an awareness of home delivery, which has boomed because people that have never thought about having home-delivered fast food, it is a whole new awareness that they have now that they didn’t have before.

“The view is that this has jumped and leapfrogged three years in advance of where it was because of this awareness.”

Turning to the current battle with arch rival McDonald’s over his launch of the “Big Jack” at Hungry Jack’s, which McDonald’s took umbrage with, Mr Cowin said he was surprised by McDonald’s decision to take legal action.

“The Big Jack has gone great and has given us an awareness, and any publicity is good publicity. We were surprised that McDonald’s pursued it, we have a registered trademark under the name ‘Big Jack’ so we will be interested to see where this goes.”

On China, Mr Cowin said Australia needed to be more mindful about its biggest customer.

“I think that you have to respect your customers. China is 40 per cent of all our exports and so somehow we have to find a way to be able to make this thing work rather than try to divide, we have to work with these guys.

“We have may philosophical or cultural differences but business is business, and when someone is your 40 per cent customer you have got to be able to find out how to make this work rather than have an arm wrestle.’’