Impresario Handmade Restaurants has a, well, impressive list of eatery brands under its umbrella. One among the more popular is SOCIAL, which for the Mumbai-headquartered company is not just a bar or a café but also a co-working space that has real relevance in a customer’s life and their journey. Case in point is boAt. The company, which made a splash with earphones and headphones, was birthed over meetings that founders Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehra had at the Social at Hauz Khas Village in New Delhi.
In an interview with Storyboard18’s Indrani Bose, Divya Aggarwal, Impresario’s chief growth officer, spoke to Stoyboard18 about SOCIAL’s hyperlocal strategy, targeting Gen Zs and more. Edited excerpts:
What are some key consumer trends that have shaped Impresario’s campaigns in the recent past?
People are wanting to connect more in real life, post-COVID. For example, we did our Friendship Day campaign, which was a play on nostalgia. We created that whole atmosphere. We had postcards, friendship bands; we hosted a Friendship Day party with 90s’ music and nostalgia to bring people back. The insight was that millennials keep telling each other, “Hum milenge (We’ll meet)”, but it never happens in daily life. So we said that let this Friendship Day be today, let SOCIAL be the place where you are coming back, celebrating your day.
Apart from #Doosra Stadium and cricket, we are also looking at other sports like football and F1 which are also something we are interested in and therefore host screenings of these events where we get communities together.
We have also noticed that indie brands make Gen Z happy.
Then there are community events such as fairs, SOCIAL Garage, where we do pop-ups. SOCIAL also does Satrangi Mela, which is a pan-India affair, where people from LGBTQIA+ communities come together for pop-ups, drinking together, celebrating and enjoying performances.
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We have this IP called LLIIT Tuesday. Tuesdays are usually slower days for most restaurants, by the virtue of it being a weekday. Plus, a lot of people don’t drink on that day. So we created a property called LIIT Tuesdays where you get one plus one on LLIITs, which is our trademark beverage. That’s something which is really popular for SOCIAL. We devised this property by understanding that it’s something people will end up coming for, especially the younger generation.
What are some of the challenges currently in the food and beverage sector? And how can we overcome them?
We utilise our loyalty and customer retention programmes to let customers know about different offers that we are running, the different campaigns we are doing, different outlets that we are opening… Creating something exciting so that there is a reason for them to come back to us when they are thinking of stepping back.
The second objective is to go to new cities, to create more awareness and to have new audiences coming in. The challenge definitely is that there’s so much else happening constantly. We are also an older brand; we’ve been there for almost nine and a half years now. We are constantly on our toes and thinking about ways to keep innovating.
Impresario is also conducting surveys and is embracing digital solutions and technology better. We have an end-to-end digital ordering system and we have our beloved newspaper menus.
Therefore, it’s a hybrid ordering system that we have created. The digital screens at our outlets host messages so people can know about the events happening in our outlets, can know about the offers running, about the programming happening. Our aim is to continuously keep communicating via technology, via digital solutions, and keep giving people reasons to come back.
We are also focusing on unique and memorable dining experiences. Recently, we opened Bandra Born in Mumbai to bring out the experience of Bandra really well.
SOCIAL opened in Hyderabad last year and now Faridabad. How is Impresario planning to grow further and evolve?
The idea is to keep opening and going deeper in the cities we are already in, like Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore. Right now, we are more strongly in South Delhi but it is also about covering the rest of Delhi.
Impresario intends to open around 15-20 outlets annually. When we go to a newer city, we’ll look at a very strong neighbourhood that has youth, corporate population, and culture.
In the world of SOCIAL, everything is hyperlocal. While we run national campaigns, in different regions, we have something that we call local heroes. Whether it’s Hyderabad or Calcutta, we have a list of dishes that we dedicate in SOCIAL signature style to that region or even within the region. For example, within Bombay, Dadar, New Cuffe Parade have different bents.
Secondly, the kind of events that we do or the communities that establish and work towards are hyperlocal. In places that have more residential societies, or let’s say there are more women, we will organise Sip and Paint experiences, where women can come and create packages for kitty parties.