Case study
A data-driven approach to successful franchise and equity growth for a quick service restaurant business
Summary
Founded with a single stall in Camden Market in 2001, Chopstix has been boxing noodles on high streets, in shopping centres and in motorway service stations for over 20 years. The brand’s mission is to excite customers with great service, great stores and most importantly, great food. With nearly 100 outlets, Chopstix aims to be the UK’s No. 1 Asian-inspired quick service noodle bar and had big plans for growth it wanted to fulfil, driven by ambitious franchisees.
Company Size
5000+
Industry
Leisure
Products Used
Challenge
Chopstix has an ambitious plan to grow through equity store development and franchising.
These plans meant they needed to understand where the best opportunities lay in the UK to successfully attract and engage potential franchisees.
A critical aspect of this needed to be the ability to objectively and dependably define and prioritise national, regional and local location opportunities for new outlets. Not just to understand where growth potential existed, but so they could provide franchisees with real clarity they would have distinct territories to operate in.
Solution
To understand Chopstix’ growth opportunities, CACI built a bespoke dashboard model using a wide range of variables to explain outlets’ relative performance and sales potential — and help them easily explain these with potential franchisees.
The model incorporates variables from CACI geodemographic data, including Acorn, Leisure Footprint, Local Footprint, and competitor location datasets, plus Chopstix’s internal financial data. The collaborative process also engaged with prospective franchisees to focus modelling on the evidence they’d want for revenue targets they’d be committing to.
The resulting PowerBI dashboard shows opportunities at national, regional, and trade zone levels on maps. All are ranked by expected turnover and growth, helping franchisees prioritise launches and achieve desired ROI. The dashboard provides detailed insights into any location, including competitors, other Chopstix outlets, visitor type mix and timings, traffic generators, and other food service brands.
In addition, the demographic information can reveal and rank delivery opportunities, identifying groups that index well for food delivery and profiles of communities where the Chopstix brand is appealing and aspirational.
Results
Sustainable growth through investment and franchising
Aaron Moore-Saxton, Franchise Director explains: “Our growth model dashboard is a differentiator in our franchising market. It gives us a common understanding with franchisees of the available opportunity. Trust and transparency are key. We don’t have to spend time arguing about targets — instead, we work together using reliable catchment and market information to make plans with lower risk and higher rewards for everyone. Franchisees can push forward with growth, with confidence, and we increase our UK market share more quickly.”
Find out more about Acorn and Location dynamics.
