This article is brought to you by Krispy Krunchy Chicken.

Think back to your favorite meal in college—the fuel that kept you going through late nights studying or that you looked forward to on your way home from a sports event or night out. You probably still feel nostalgic for it today. For college students at universities with which Krispy Krunchy Chicken has partnered, there’s a good chance that the company’s fried chicken is that meal.

“By partnering with colleges and universities to bring Krispy Krunchy to campus, we are widening the reach that our product has with consumers. For four months of the year, students that eat Krispy Krunchy during their college semesters are not at school. They’re going to want that chicken while at home for the holidays or on summer break, and so they’re going to go to their closest c-store to get it,” said Alice Crowder, chief marketing officer at Krispy Krunchy Chicken.

During a sampling event at Utah Tech University, 85% of college students who responded to a four-question survey said they had never heard of Krispy Krunchy Chicken before, but 91% of them said they’d be very likely to purchase it if they knew where to find it.

“So now, they’ve been introduced to a brand that is in over 3,500 convenience stores across America and know where to find it. That creates brand affinity and trust in the product, and they know they will get a quality meal from that location because they’ve already had it on campus. They’re going to go buy it from a c-store when they might not have otherwise before,” said Crowder.

College students are a critical demographic for building brand awareness, she added. They’re “more likely to be risk takers and don't have some of the preconceived biases that we do as adults,” she said, and they are more apt to try new foods from restaurants they haven’t eaten from before.

And according to the company’s research, chicken is the top-selling foodservice category on college campuses, surpassing burgers, salads and other concepts for the demographic, said Crowder. “Unlike other food categories that tend to have regional styles, such as barbeque or pizza, fried chicken is universal and appeals to consumers no matter where they are.”

For Krispy Krunchy, increasing brand awareness outside of convenience stores is all about introducing the foodservice concept to untapped groups and bringing more consumers into the operators’ customer funnel, said Crowder.

“Our overall goal is to get as much chicken in front of consumers as possible and to strengthen profitability for our operators. That means that not only do we have to capture retailers’ current customers, we are adding other customers—students, sports fans, consumers on delivery apps—and are finding as many ways that we can to push traffic to their store,” said Crowder. “Being present on campus doesn’t take away from c-store operator profitability. It builds brand awareness and leads to more transactions, especially when those consumers are on the road and not at school.”

This is part two in a two-part series on Krispy Krunchy Chicken. Read part one, about Krispy Krunchy’s professional sports partnerships, here.