Client

We worked with a food and drink business that has a number of cafés located in London.

Situation

The company was feeling the heat of competition and sales were declining. Since many of the cafés owned by our client are strategically placed next to university campuses, they wanted to explore new ways of appealing to young consumers. 

Action

To assess the quality of service at each of the cafés, we joined forces with university students to conduct mystery shopping. Posing as regular customers, our team monitored how our client’s staff interact with consumers and handle complaints.  

Our next task was to learn more about customer expectations and attitudes using street interviews and ethnographic research. More than two thousand young consumers participated in our study and we had further discussions with some of our client’s loyal customers.

We then talked to the employees to learn about their problems, concerns and ideas and analysed the local competitors in detail.

Looking through the lens of the customer, our team discovered missed sales opportunities and proposed a new customer strategy to help the client deliver outstanding service and create customer excitement. 

Result

The company recorded a minimum of 15% uplift in footfall in every café and a measurable increase in customer spend and repeat visits. University students started to promote our client's brand on social media for the first time. The client expressed that the results are gratifying. Our team was retained to help the firm design and launch a marketing campaign.

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