Popeyes to begin North India journey from the heart of Delhi: Gaurav Pande

While it was established in the United States more than 50 years ago, the Cajun chicken chain Popeyes is still making its inroads into India, courtesy Jubilant Food Works (which is the India franchisee for other legacy QSR chains like Dominos and Dunkin). While the first Popeyes store was launched in Bengaluru in January 2022 and soon expanded to Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Manipal, the brand is now venturing into North India, beginning with Delhi NCR with its first store in Omaxe Mall in Chandni Chowk.

“Delhi is arguably the food capital of India, and it’s not just the food here, but the stories around food. Similarly, we have a very rich culinary heritage at Popeyes. After seeing the love we got in South India, starting with our first store in Bengaluru and the amount of love people had for the flavours, Delhi was next on our list, and what better way to enter than the heart of Delhi, both metaphorically and geographically,” says Gaurav Pande, Executive Vice President and Business Head of Popeyes.

While acknowledging that the brand has its work cut out for it, in bringing forward a brand that isn’t well known to the general public as such, Pande is equally confident in the brand’s menu offerings and its marketing strategy to enable Popeyes to hit the ground running.

“Wherever we go into the QSR business, we depend on different but parallel tracks. One is that when we enter the city, we have to mark our presence in the city, and you will see as we launch that we are going to present across multiple channels and media all over Delhi NCR. And a parallel track is also being very hyperlocal because restaurants ultimately have some sort of catchment area, meaning as our stores open, we’re going hyperlocal with our digital presence.

According to Pande, while the brand’s biggest spend is definitely on OOH so far, be it hoardings from bus stands to outside malls, digital is cutting into an increasingly large share of the advertising pie.

“And the third leg is performance marketing, which is when we launch on day one, we will launch with our app. So on day one consumers could order from our app, as we have our own delivery fleet, our own ordering system. We use performance marketing to drive the app, as well as for driving footfalls into the store. These are the three elements of our media plan: going wide; going hyperlocal; and then being very, very clinical about the data from your visit, whether in-store or online.”

And speaking of going running, Popeyes is going all-in, with stores planned in Delhi, Gurugram and Faridabad in the next one month, with plans to expand to Noida and other places in the next tranche. “We see all of NCR as Delhi because there's a lot of floating population in the capital, with people travelling up to two hours a day between the cities every day for work, and so every part of NCR is our target market,” says Pande.