When Paul Brown was named chief executive at Arby's in 2013, the Atlanta fast-food chain was just beginning to recover from a yearslong slide that had left it a punch line on The Daily Show.

Brown, who earned his stripes in the hotel, airline and travel industries, might not have seemed an obvious choice for revving up the 52-year-old roast beef sandwich chain.

But under Brown, Arby's has shot out of the chutes like a bull that didn't want to end up on the menu. Brown, 49, pushed Arby's to revamp its marketing and to roll out new and exotic meals at a much faster pace, including things like venison and Kentucky bourbon-flavored bacon sandwiches.

Since then, the company's market share, revenues and industry ranking have jumped. The results have won Brown recognition, including an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award this year for the Southeast, and a Golden Chain Award from Nation's Restaurant News.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently talked to Brown about retooling the chain. His comments are edited for clarity and length:

You came from Northwest Airlines, Expedia, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels, McKinsey & Co. How did that help with Arby's?

The restaurant industry looks a lot like retail and hospitality. You have multiple locations. There are owner-operators but also a lot of franchisees involved. Real estate. Architecture. All of that looks quite similar in many ways.

What's a big difference?

The pace of product development, if you're going to do it right, is incredibly fast. . . . We're coming out with a new advertising campaign and a new product every single month. The way you stay at the top of customers' minds is by coming out with new great products . . . and putting some really compelling advertising around it.

How does changing up the food items help?

I think it is a key reason Arby's has seen success beyond what others have seen. It keeps us top of mind, fresh, interesting.

We have made the menu more interesting by diversifying around roast beef. Arby's was very tightly defined as a brand around roast beef. … If you look at our new products we've launched, virtually none of them have been roast beef. They've been other proteins, and that has been appealing to a broader base of customers.

The second thing that we've done is launch sliders. Sliders (small sandwiches) are an affordable entry-level price point. We price them at $1.29 apiece (to bring in younger customers).

That's the product side. If you go to the marketing side, there's a lot of things we have done to reach a much younger audience.

Like what?

The "We have the meats" campaign, I think that has pretty broad appeal. It appeals to people my age, but it also has a lot of appeal to teenagers and the younger children. I think it just gets people's attention.

Who are your core customers?

I think that's one of our keys to success. We started by defining our customers by psychographics — what their value systems, their belief systems, are. And then you can figure from that, where they are. I think a big mistake a lot of (businesses) make is they go straight to demographics (like age, income and education level.)