Ever wondered why Nando’s font is always tilted at 87 degrees? Because they were founded in 1987!
It all started when two friends visited a Portuguese eatery in 1987 which sparked their ambition to bring the PERi-PERi spice to the world! The first Nando’s restaurant draws its roots in Rosettenville in Johannesburg, South Africa. And now, it is one of the biggest restaurant chains in the world.
With 13 branches in 5 cities in Pakistan, Nando’s has built a loyal base of walk-in customers in their physical restaurants. They have gained a stronghold in the restaurant industry in Pakistan since 2001. However, what they lacked was a unified ordering solution because their walk-in customers were theirs, but their online customers were not.
Challenge
With the changing trend towards online food delivery, Nando’s was one of the first international restaurant chains to join third-party food aggregators to cater to their home delivery orders. However, its online presence was masked because of the involvement of a third party, which meant that the brand was unable to reach out to its own customers directly because Nando’s did not have its own owned platform from which customers could order their Nando’s directly.
In addition to this, third-party aggregators also charge heavy commissions on each order eating into Nando’s revenue. This meant that whatever Nando’s earned from its online orders, a good chunk of it was going to third-party aggregators.
Another issue that came up for Nando’s and other restaurants on food aggregator services was losing out on customer data. When restaurants list themselves on third-party apps, they lose direct access to their customers and their information, which is essential for creating customer engagement and loyalty. Without this information, restaurants such as Nando’s are in the dark about who their customers are, where they are, what they want, and how to reach them.
“You don’t have the flexibility of reaching out to your customers the way that it should be [because of third-party aggregators]” – Faiza Musawar, General Marketing Manager, Nando’s Pakistan
Moreover, since Nando’s had minimal control over their online customer data, they were unable to engage with these customers regularly in a way to build loyalty by providing them with offers, promos, and SMS notifications.
Solution
In 2021, Nando’s joined hands with Blink to create a unified ordering solution for the brand. Blink provided Nando’s with its own branded mobile-optimized website and mobile app, cutting out third-party aggregators, giving the brand full control of its own direct online ordering system, and full ownership of its customer data. Now, Nando’s has full ownership of not only its physical restaurants but its online food delivery on the digital front as well.
The Engagement Suite that Blink provided Nando’s had been what they had been waiting for all these years. Nando’s could now offer time-bound discounts and promo codes with automatic enabling and disabling capabilities, something that the brand used to initiate an influencer marketing campaign with promo codes that customers could get from their favorite digital influencers.
Through this campaign, Nando’s customers used these promo codes on its website and app more than 500+ times, increasing its customer base and revenues.
Blink also provided Nando’s with a multi-layered product catalogue, which allowed the restaurant to provide customers that were loyal to a certain menu item, e.g., PERi-PERi bites, or Nando’s chocolate cake, another free item. Nando’s was also able to create promo codes that allowed them to give customers flat discounts, percentage discounts, or a specific free menu item, e.g., 6 free PERi-PERi bites if they used a certain promo code.
Nando’s even has the option to top up the e-wallets of their most loyal customers, through the e-wallet top-up feature that Blink provides, allowing the restaurant to further increase its customer loyalty and reward its best customers.
With Blink, Nando’s is able to directly reach its customers through the SMS Marketing Integration feature with affordable packages and attribute filters for targeted, end-to-end SMS marketing all in one place. Now, Nando’s can promote its offers directly to its customers.
Results
Nando’s was able to carry out a feat unimaginable a few years ago: acquire an online customer base of 25,000+ customers! Now, Nando’s is able to devise marketing strategies based on the data collected from these customers, as well as target them directly through SMS and push notifications. What’s more, their re-order rate stands at a tremendous ~50%, considering the restaurant industry average is only ~30%.
With the CRM provided by Blink, Nando’s is able to understand its customers inside and out. Their customers’ purchase patterns, location, demographics, and more, are under Nando’s watchful eye, allowing the brand to carry out promotional strategies catering to its actual online customers. Utilizing Blink’s CRM, Nando’s can send hyper-focused promos to customers, such as providing a quarter-chicken-related promo code to customers that often placed an order for that item.
By having its own direct online ordering platform, Nando’s has been able to achieve an average order value in excess of PKR 2,000 and is able to keep their revenue for themselves, and not lose it to third-party aggregators.
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