Restaurant chain Nando’s has opened a recording studio in one of its London branches.
The recording studio, in the chain’s Soho restaurant, is visible to diners and offers professional equipment for budding producers artists and DJs “ready to turn the heat up on their career in the restaurant’s familiar surroundings.”
But what does a recording studio have to do with selling chicken - be it peri peri or any other?
To understand this it is worth taking a step back to look at who frequents Nando’s and how this group communicates.
Customer base
Nando’s has a particularly young customer base and, as we all know, this group is very much at home on social media.
Social media channels are littered with uploaded photographs of meals about to be consumed. Dining out is certainly a social affair, and the more buzz that customers create around it the better, be it via uploaded photographs of food or images of first forays into the music industry.
Nando’s already has its Music Exchange, a global program bringing together emerging and established musicians for mentoring, workshops, collaborations and “explosive events”. Its latest initiative is offering successful applicants access to an in-house studio engineer and industry standard equipment and, no doubt, the chance to invite their friends to come to watch, eat, and snap away, spreading images of Nando’s far and wide.
Millennials, it is often said, want adventures and experiences, and a recording studio in a casual dining outlet is certainly offering them that.
The company’s approach, an in-restaurant experience, would seem to be working. Its U.K. Facebook page has over 4.3 million followers, far outstripping the pages of many competitor food businesses.
While the group is no stranger to grabbing headlines through advertising, at the end of the day customers are any company’s best advocates, and a recording studio that you can eat in – well just be careful with the peri peri sauce!
