El Pollo Loco Hires The Many, and Its CMO Hires Her Own Past

El Pollo Loco has added The Many to its creative agency roster, handing the independent integrated shop the lead on creative for what the chain is calling its next stage of growth.

The appointment is a reunion. The Many previously worked with both El Pollo Loco chief marketing officer Jill Adams and vice-president of creative and culture Grant Knapp, and the two sides built a way of working together that pushed brands into culture rather than at it — turning audiences into participants instead of impression counts. Hiring the agency you already know how to brief is not lazy; in quick-service restaurants, where marketing calendars run on promotional weeks and not on quarters, it is the only way to move at the speed the category demands.

What the roster addition signals is appetite. El Pollo Loco's distinctiveness — fire-grilled chicken, Mexican-American heritage, a Southern California origin story — is exactly the kind of specificity that gets sanded off when a chain chases national scale through discount messaging. The brief handed to The Many, on the evidence of the language around the appointment, is the opposite: build cultural presence and let the food do the differentiating.

The chain is competing in a value war it cannot win on price alone against operators with several times its footprint. Adams is betting that a shop fluent in cultural work can make a mid-size brand feel larger than its store count, which is the only leverage available.

The Many keeps its position as one of the more durable independents in a market where independence keeps getting acquired. Winning a roster seat at a growth-stage QSR is the sort of client that justifies staying that way.