Giggling Squid – National Restaurant Chain
Giggling squid was a fledgling restaurant chain in 2015 with 9 restaurants all under 90 covers. Owner Andrew Laurillard had just taken the keys to his largest investment so far, a 150 cover restaurant in Salisbury which was previously trading (badly) as a Strada Italian restaurant. After some indifferent launches and a recent closure in Crawley (a restaurant that just never took off), Andy was keen to make sure the restaurant got momentum and positive word of mouth from the off. After meeting in Salisbury and discussing ideas I was given the opportunity to work on the Salisbury launch campaign.
The Salisbury launch was a great success, we managed to generate a lot of digital word-of-mouth using digital campaign using facebook, Instagram, influencers and syncing this all in with a launch event. The restaurant had the strongest opening week of any giggling squid restaurant (hitting record turnover figures for the group in the first week).
Further restaurant launches followed using the same formula in Clifton, Guildford, Billericay and Esher, as the Giggling Squid restaurant portfolio grew to 14 properties. We also worked on launching a home-delivery service in Horsham and began rolling out Deliveroo at restaurants after testing the service in Clifton. A restaurant launch in Esher (at a former Carluccios site that was trading at a loss) again broke the groups record for the best performing restaurant site in its opening week.
With excellent marketing and publicity Giggling Squid were able to take over restaurants from other major chains with deep pockets (Strada, Carluccios, Giraffe, Café Rouge etc) in locations that were failing and make them trade profitably. The marketing formula giggling squid uses could be applied to any restaurant or cuisine.
The chain now has 30 restaurants nationwide and is one of the few restaurant groups still buoyant in difficult trading conditions.