- Chili’s has seen a major comeback, reporting a 24% sales jump and 16% increase in traffic this quarter, driven by creative marketing and a focus on value Under CEO Kevin Hochman and CMO George Felix, the brand has tapped into nostalgia, viral social-media moments, and playful stunts while tripling its marketing budget over three years.
“Chili’s is officially back, baby back,” Brinker CEO Kevin Hochman said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report released Wednesday, a nod at the beloved casual-dining chain’s iconic jingle from the 1990s.
Chili’s has been winning at fast-casual dining this year while competitors have stifled due to tariffs and changing dining habits. The brand has made itself brutally efficient and has reigned supreme in the value-meal wars. And it’s been a viral sensation on social media for its quirky marketing campaigns and epic cheesepulls.
“Chili’s has always had a history of really having fun with advertising and trying to be in the zeitgeist or pop culture,” Hochman told Fortune. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously. You can be silly about the burger because at the end of the day, we’re just selling burgers and booze.”
Not only has Chili’s been the proverbial talk of the town, but it has the hard data to show for its success: The chain reported a 24% spike in sales and 16% jump in traffic this quarter.
Much of the boost in enthusiasm for and business to the chain has stemmed from its recent marketing campaigns. During the past three years, Chili’s increased its marketing budget by $105 million; in 2022, it had just $32 million allocated, but its 2025 marketing budget is a whopping $137 million, according to Hochman. AdAge crowned Chili’s on its 2025 list of Creativity Award winners.
Winning marketing campaigns
Hochman regularly credits Chili’s CMO George Felix with the brand’s renewed success. Felix previously served as CMO of Tinder and Pizza Hut and as director of marketing and director of brand communications for KFC, where he breathed new life into the brand’s emblematic mascot through the “Return of Colonel Sanders” campaign.
Felix is implementing a similar playbook at Chili’s, using nostalgia to attract customers. One example was the opening of a Chili’s restaurant in Scranton, Penn., a nod to The Office episode where character Pam Beesly exclaims, “I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.”
“For decades, Chili’s has inserted itself in culture—introducing the now-famous Baby Back Ribs jingle, and most recently unleashing Triple Dipper cheese pulls on TikTok,” Felix said in a statement. “But we’ve also seen the brand come to life on screen through the years, and that includes being tied to Scranton despite never having a location there. That changes this year.”
Felix told Marketing Dive that while Chili’s attracts customers in a variety of ways, the marketing push behind its Scranton restaurant leaned toward a “millennial, nostalgic audience.”
“That was certainly a nostalgia play, but the interesting part about that is, there’s all of us that watched it when it was on, and now it’s had this whole resurgence… that really expands generations,” he said. “It started as a nostalgia play, but I think it also resonates with the younger audience in a fun way.”
Chili’s has gotten creative in other ways, like releasing a Triple Dipper-inspired bedding set and Tecovas cowboy boots made from its archetypal red leather booths.
Meanwhile, TikTok and other social-media platforms have been flooded with videos of cheese pulls from the mozzarella sticks as part of the Triple Dipper appetizer platter and Chili’s own social-media team leans into absurdity and humor with many of its own posts.
In one of its most recent Instagram posts, Chili’s inserted itself into the lore of the upcoming Taylor Swift album posting a close-up photo of a rib likening it to the new album cover.
Hochman even recounted a time where their social-media team saw a couple wanted to cater their wedding with Chili’s, which inspired the precedent of the chain offering free catering to any couple who gets engaged in their restaurants.
“These are just cool things that a brand that is fun and doesn’t take themselves too seriously are going to lean into,” Hochman told Fortune. “I do think that guests appreciate that, because at the end of the day, they know we’re not corporate stiff types, that we’re just kind of like them. We just want to have fun, and we want them to see that.”
