ADA Case Study
Healthy Food Chain Successfully Rebrands Itself via First-Party Data & Location Analytics
The Challenge
This healthy and sustainable food brand was created to bring a new dimension to salads and a new approach to fast food. With COVID-19 hitting the food retail industry, this food chain was not spared from the devastating impacts, among them were:
i) Eroding profit marginThe lockdown forced the brand to close 25% of their branches. The ongoing rental and delivery platform commission made it hard for the brand to sustain itself, even with subsidies.
ii) Switching from selling salads to selling its ingredientsThey set up their own grocer market and started selling ingredients and meal kits to reach out to the WFH crowd. However, this did not help. The website experience was less than ideal and the weekly orders were single digits.
The Strategy
1. Getting the house in order
ADA delved deep into an audit for a full scale gap analysis. We uncovered quick win opportunities and entrenched issues that required more strategic evolvement. To build the best response, we started with their customers.
2. Finding out what the customer wants
From our user research, three key trends emerged:
- Healthy home-based cooking is on the rise
- Willingness to pay more for better ingredients with savings on delivery
- Openness to try out alternate ordering channels beyond the usual delivery aggregators
3. Finding out where are our competitors
We saw the take-up of independent low rental shophouses with food delivery rider access near private estates. It was a good base to start a cloud kitchen operation, since it was not at the mercy of retail mall landlords with a commission levy.
The Execution
1. Going into the “Cloud”
A “Cloud Kitchen” was set up. We focused on zonal targeting and differentiated ourselves with lower delivery cost and offers. This helped drive high awareness and cost efficiency while driving traffic to the website. The brand managed to collect their own customer data.
2. Owning the customer data for Lifetime Value Growth
With paid media driving the conversion, we needed to drive better ROI in terms of customer lifetime value. We crafted the RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis with a welcome programme, and to drive repeat order.
3. Focusing on plant-based protein
With the rise in healthy eating, we saw an opportunity to define the key proposition of the brand, focusing on plant-based protein, targeted at the health-conscious professionals. Partnerships with local chefs helped to create favourite local recipes, which improved overall awareness and sales.
The Results
- 388% increase in sales
- 294% increase in additional sales
- 21% increase in profitability
- 76% increase in new customers
- 67% increase in returning customers
- 3x ROAS via Paid Media Optimisation
- 40% reduction in manual data work
Awards
- Gold in Best Response to Change category at The Drum Digital Advertising Awards 2021
- Silver in Retail, Ecommerce and Consumer Goods category at The Drum Digital Advertising Awards 2021
- Silver in Food & Beverage category at Mob-Ex 2021
- Bronze in Best Launch / Relaunch at Mob-Ex 2021