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Since its launch on September 30, OpenAI’s Sora app has dominated the iOS App Store charts, thanks to its easy breezy AI video generation and an initially loose interpretation of copyright laws. On Friday, its reign came to an end. Your new champion is … Dave’s Hot Chicken.
Yes! Not ChatGPT or Gemini or Threads or any of the other usual suspects. Dave’s Hot Chicken now rules over the App Store, where its slack-beaked, bug-eyed mascot icon expresses appropriate surprise at its ascent. How did it do it? How did it break the grasp of OpenAI’s golem TikTok? With something people love even more than large language models: free food.
“They’re running a promotion for free sliders in celebration of Drake’s birthday,” says Adam Blacker, PR director of the app analytics firm Apptopia. “Free food always gets the downloads flowing.”
If you’re wondering what Drake has to do with any of this, he invested in the fast casual restaurant chain in 2021, and presumably made a mint when the company sold a majority stake to private equity firm Roark Capital for a reported $1 billion. For the third consecutive year, the company gave away one (1) free slider to anyone who has downloaded the app in honor of Drake’s birthday. (The rapper and Raptors fan turns 39 today; the giveaway was Thursday.)
“We’re celebrating a celebrity that’s popular and that’s currently relevant, and also getting food in people’s mouths,” says Dave’s Hot Chicken chief technology officer Leon Davoyan.
And it truly is a lot of people. On a typical week, Davoyan says, Dave’s sees between 20,000 and 25,000 new sign-ups to its loyalty database. On Thursday alone the promotion drove 343,531 new accounts—a more than 10 percent bump to the brand’s overall membership in a single day, according to the CTO.
It was enough to knock Sora out of the top slot for the first time since October 3, an impressive stretch for an app that’s still invite-only. In the first 23 days since it launched, Sora racked up 3.2 million iOS downloads in the US, according to app analytics company Sensor Tower. That’s a much faster pace than even ChatGPT, which while similarly viral notched 2.3 million US downloads in the same time. (Sora is not yet available in the Google Play Store, but it's incoming.) OpenAI declined to comment.
While Sora is likely to reclaim the top spot after the Drake promotion dies down, Dave’s Hot Chicken should continue reaping the benefits of its giveaway. Last year, according to Sensor Tower, downloads of the app in the four weeks following the same marketing push were more than 50 percent higher than the month leading up to it. All those free sandwiches are worth the long-term gains.
Dave’s is hardly the first or only quick-service chain to find success with freebies. Burger King, Dunkin’, Dairy Queen, and McDonald’s have all hit number one or two in the US iOS App Store during promotional periods over the last few years, according to data compiled by app analytics company Appfigures. The bump usually lasts a day or two, and can drive a huge number of installs—Dunkin’s April Fools Day promotion this year, which gave away a million free coffees, yielded a 545 percent day-over-day increase, says Randy Nelson, Appfigures’ head of insights. Nelson doesn’t expect Dave’s to hit quite those highs, but every little bit helps.
“The Dave’s app is very important to our long-term success because of two things. Our core demographic is young and very digital forward,” says Davoyan. “And generally speaking, digital sales in the restaurant industry are on the rise … It makes sense to invest in digital because that’s the direction that everything’s going in.”
Having a direct relationship with its customers helps restaurant chains like Dave’s not rely so much on third-party platforms like DoorDash and Uber, although Davoyan says he’s agnostic about what app people order their hot chicken from. It also gives Dave’s more control over what can be a complex ordering experience.
“We have seven spice levels,” says Davoyan. “The app allows you to have the same level of customization on the app as you do in-store … You need that custom front-end, that custom interface and a strong focus on UI and UX to turn that into a benefit rather than a frustration.”
The Dave’s app continues to evolve, although perhaps not at the pace of the world’s most valuable startup. Its ambitions are slightly more modest, like introducing a convenient reordering system similar to what you’d find in the Starbucks app. That may not be enough to keep its App Store throne. Then again, another Drake birthday is only a year away.
