The New Items
Zaxby's is adding two limited-time menu items across its network of more than 1,000 locations in 24 states for the holiday season: a Honey Chipotle Sauce and a Peppermint Cookies & Cream Shake. Both go on general sale November 2 and run through January 18, giving the Atlanta-based chicken chain roughly an 11-week promotional window to capture incremental traffic during the highest-traffic dining period of the year.
The Honey Chipotle Sauce — formulated with honey, brown sugar, red chili, and chipotle peppers — is designed to extend the utility of Zaxby's core Chicken Fingerz and wings platform, the menu architecture that has anchored the chain's growth since its 1990 founding. The Peppermint Cookies & Cream Shake is a hand-spun milkshake topped with cookies-and-cream pieces, adding a dessert occasion to what is primarily a chicken-centric menu.
Loyalty as a Traffic Lever
Zaxby's is using the launch to drive engagement with its Zax Rewardz program. Honey Chipotle Sauce became available to loyalty members on October 26 — one week before the broad rollout — exclusively through the Zaxby's app, Zaxbys.com, and third-party delivery partners. The digital-gate strategy is a now-standard QSR playbook for building app installs and first-party data, and Zaxby's has leaned on it repeatedly to deepen the Zax Rewardz base. By restricting early access to digital channels, the chain also generates measurable conversion data tied to the campaign before it moves into full in-restaurant availability.
Chief Marketing Officer Patrick Schwing framed the dual launch as the opening move in a broader holiday campaign. "We have even more saucy surprises for fans to unwrap later this season," Schwing said, signaling additional promotional activations before year-end. The chain is also introducing festive packaging on its Zax Packz group-meal format, a direct play for catering and party-occasion spend — a segment that has become increasingly competitive among fast-casual and QSR operators during Q4.
Industry Context
Limited-time offerings remain the primary demand-generation tool for chicken-focused QSR chains navigating a consumer environment where average check sensitivity is elevated. Sauce innovation in particular carries low incremental cost relative to a full protein SKU launch, while delivering the menu-news signal that drives media impressions and social engagement. Zaxby's was named Transformational Brand of the Year by QSR Magazine in 2025, a recognition that coincided with the chain's continued push to differentiate on flavor variety against competitors in the fast-casual chicken segment.
The back-to-back sauce-and-shake strategy also mirrors tactics used broadly across the limited-time-offer calendar in foodservice, where operators have found that pairing a savory LTO with a seasonal beverage or dessert increases average ticket by encouraging multi-item add-ons. Whether Zaxby's January 18 end date implies a potential extension — or a deliberate scarcity close ahead of a Q1 refresh — will be a metric worth tracking as the chain heads into its next fiscal period.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
