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Panda: An Immersion into Regional Chinese Cuisine
Profile
Panda Restaurant group is one of the most successful US quick casual restaurant chains, with an average unit volume of $ 1million and over 800 locations being enhanced by a new store opening every three days. The company founder, Andrew Chern lead the growth of the chain until 2005 when he turned the reigns over to Tom Davin, a Harvard MBA and former Taco Bell executive whose industry experience could lead this growing chain past the 1,000 unit mark with further focus and success. Tom subsequently built a team around him comprised of individuals with experience leading large national chains.
Challenge
With new executives assembled from diverse backgrounds the Panda leadership team came to The Culinary Edge to help guide the process of education and immersion in the foundations of Chinese cuisine and Asian dining trends. The new Panda executive team needed to gain an understanding of the Panda brand offering and existing menu and current trends in the region in order to have a vision of what innovations would make sense for their menu in the short and long term.
Process
Many of the new team members had little exposure to Asian food, so The Culinary Edge brought them to San Francisco to present them with an immersion on Chinese and Asian cuisines. After diving in to a history and overview of Chinese regional cooking, the team embarked on a three-day market tour, eating at up to a dozen restaurants per day to taste dishes, learn about customer service, culture, cooking techniques and influences across Asia. Through focused and guided hands-on experience, the team was able to distill learnings on modern Asian food trends and focus on how these were affecting their consumer and what this meant for the Panda brand.
Results
The team came away with actionable and effective inspiration. The end result was that the Panda Group was able to determine a strategic plan that will be an appropriate roadmap for future menu strategy.