Takeaway Truth: Red Rooster RoosterRap Range

Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: Red Rooster’s RoosterRap range.

Fast food restaurants have been known to gild the lily when it comes to accurate depictions of their menu items. Far too often, the mouth-watering feast on the poster turns out to be a limp and oily morsel. In a bid to keep the fry-jockey overlords honest, we’ve decided to document the reality of fast food — it was either that, or go postal like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Like most of the other fast food chains in the old guard, Red Rooster has been finding things tougher in recent years, as consumers move towards healthier and more ‘upmarket’ offerings. [related title=”More Takeaway Truth” tag=”takeaway-truth” items=”4″]

In a recent Roy Morgan Research poll on takeaway satisfaction, Red Rooster experienced a bigger drop than any other fast food chain, with satisfaction levels falling from 74 percent to 70 percent in the past year.

Between 2008 and 2013, the number of Australians who admitted to visiting Red Rooster also dropped from 52 percent to 49 percent.

Meanwhile, rival chicken franchises Oporto’s and Nando’s have enjoyed a steady rise in popularity — you can find out the current ranking of each takeaway chicken franchise here.

Clearly, people are sick of tradition and are after something a little bit fancier — which is where the RoosterRap comes in. [clear]

The Red Rooster ‘RoosterRaps’ are a new range of soft tortilla wraps filled with crispy chicken strips and “new premium ingredients” (lettuce, onion and tomato for the most part).

The range consists of the Classic Herb (crispy chicken, herb mayo, tomato, lettuce, onion), the Caesar (crispy chicken, bacon, lettuce, creamy Parmesan sauce) and the Chili Aioli (crispy chicken, tomato, red onion, lettuce and chili aioli sauce.)

Red Rooster is pitching its wraps as a premium option for snacking on the go, presumably in a bid to entice discerning customers away from the likes of Nando’s. You can check out an advertisement for the RoosterRap range below.

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So how do the Red Rooster RoosterRaps stack up to their scrumptious marketing images? In a bid to find out, we grabbed one of each from a NSW outlet in Emu Plains. Here are the results:

RoosterRap Chili Aioli:

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RoosterRap Caesar:

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RoosterRap Classic Herb:

And here are all three together:

As you can see, the resemblance isn’t exactly uncanny. While some of this can be put down to assembly, our tortilla wrap appeared to be narrower and longer than the one in the posters. This resulted in less overlapping ingredients — we still got two chicken strips per tortilla, but they weren’t double-stacked. The tortilla bread was also a bit dry and crinkly looking, which doesn’t scream freshness.

We’re not sure whether this was due to the way it was wrapped or because different tortillas were used. Either way, the RedRooster range can only be described as a visual disappointment. (On the plus side, they did taste pretty great!)

Truth Rating: 6/10

Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.


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